Air Quality

Stay home, close the doors, draw the shades, forget the lawn, raise the thermostat, keep the kids inside, do not paint the deck, do not paint your fingernails, do not touch the barbecue fluid and, Baltimore, do not - repeat, DO NOT - apply hair- spray. It was an Ozone Action Day. Yesterday was not only Ozone Action Day but also the first OAD of the Ozone Season, which is now an annual event in Maryland life, marking the languid stretch of days ranging from May 1 to Sept. 30, corresponding with highway vacations and outdoor barbecues and the mindless pleasure of applying the power of crude rotary engines to the art of gardening.

Arundel Mills shows myth of land-use controlPlans for the super-regional Arundel Mills "shoppertainment" complex in Anne Arundel County demonstrates the need for a mechanism to evaluate projects that will impact the regional economy, air quality and transportation systems.Large-scale projects such as Arundel Mills illustrate the shortcomings -- and the myth -- of local land-use control.Arundel Mills will generate approximately 75 million additional vehicle miles annually in the region and attract shoppers from up to 200 miles away.

INCREASES IN auto air pollution in the Baltimore region since 1990 are disappointing, given state and federal efforts to curb harmful tailpipe emissions. Further action is needed to reduce vehicle pollutants in the region, one of the nation's worst for unhealthy smog. That includes analyzing new road proposals to assure that the traffic generated will meet federal clean air standards.But for road projects under way, with plans, designs and land in hand, there's no reason to apply an ever-changing, ever-tougher set of standards.

Parents should turn off the TV, give kids booksAs an elementary school teacher, I read with interest The Sun's articles on early reading.I am sure that all elementary teachers reading the May 14 article about little Julie's problems beginning to read, "The pieces come together," diagnosed her problem immediately: Little Julie has a television in her bedroom.I spend a lot of time trying to convince my fourth-graders that time spent in front of screens (television and video) directly and negatively impacts their learning.

CONSIDER HOW it might work with traffic laws."Yes, officer, I was speeding, but in my past four trips down this highway, I traveled well under the limit, giving me future credits and protection."That's the essence of the state's proposal to credit industries for "expected" air pollution that they did not emit in past years because they shut down factories.It's dubious environmental policy, especially as it would set back hard-wrought plans of the Baltimore and Washington region to meet federal cleanup deadlines in the next decade.

PARENTS OF STUDENTS at Columbia's Jeffers Hill Elementary School ask a legitimate question: Is the 23-year-old building making their children sick?Students and staff have complained about headaches, fatigue, stomachaches, blurred vision and an inability to concentrate. Parents suspect that the building is responsible for the problems, although the evidence to date is far from conclusive.This creates a dilemma for parents such as Margie Wiedel, who has two children at the school. "I go back and forth between feeling like I'm being an overreactive parent to wondering, 'Am I doing my kids a disservice every day by letting them go in there and come home with headaches?

In the wake of complaints at Columbia's Jeffers Hill Elementary School, Howard County PTA officials have called on all county schools to form parent committees to deal with air quality issues."

AFTER YEARS of legislative delay, Gov. Parris N. Glendening said this week he would proceed with plans to put Marylanders' cars through more stringent and controversial air pollution tests.And there seemed something appropriate in the testing apparatus, a dynamometer, usually described as a "treadmill" and decried by critics as "intrusive" (you hand the keys to an emissions tester, who attaches a probe to your chariot's tailpipe and revs it to highway speed on the dyno).Treadmills and their relatives, the Nordic Tracks and the Stairmasters, have become almost household items.

Carroll County registered one of the highest ground-level ozone readings in the state June 7 and has averaged the poorest air quality in Maryland this month."

The state urged residents of the Baltimore region to take precautions today because air quality is expected to approach unhealthful levels.The air quality yesterday was moderate, with an index reading at 4 p.m. of 71 for ground-level ozone. The air is declared "Code Orange," or approaching unhealthful levels, when the ozone readings are 89-99. It is "Code Red," or harmful, when the index reaches 100 or above.This summer, the index has registered over 100 on July 8, July 6 and June 22, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment.

Twelve states, including Maryland, and the District of Columbia urged the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday to adopt more rigorous national policies so they can meet federal air pollution reduction requirements for the region. The Ozone Transport Commission approved a statement that said states will have trouble meeting air pollution reduction goals on time without tougher national laws. The commission comprises 12 Northeastern states and the District of Columbia, and was formed by the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act. Ted Aburn, director of the Maryland Department of the Environment's Air and Radiation Management Administration, said though many states on the commission have made strides in cleaning the air, meeting EPA requirements is difficult when a lot of the pollution comes from other states.

The General Assembly passed three environmental protection measures in its recently concluded session that affect fly ash, air quality and storm-water management, according to the county. The legislation strengthens existing regulations requiring air quality monitoring for coal fly ash and extends the statute of limitations for storm-water management plans to three years, providing consistent enforcement of environmental laws. The legislation also requires the state to include county reimbursement claims for environmental health monitoring and testing, in cases where the state collects fines.

Maryland has dirty air and it's going to stay dirty longer, thanks to the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Once again, the Bush administration has chosen industry over science, and the public will pay the price. Shame on President Bush. EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson's decision last week to lower the pollution standard from 84 to 75 units of ozone for every billion units of air means improvements in air quality here will be slower than they should be. It was a judgment likely to save industry billions in pollution control investments but one with serious consequences for the health of thousands of Americans.

TEHRAN, Iran -- The inhabitants of this metropolis of 12 million people and perhaps as many cars, buses, trucks and motorbikes have seen something new on the streets in recent months: the city itself, unobscured by the thick layer of smog that normally blankets the capital. For years, pollution in Tehran seemed only to grow worse, the stench of exhaust more dizzying, the number of patients rushed to hospitals with breathing difficulties ever increasing. But a number of government measures, including rationing gasoline and limiting traffic in the city center, have noticeably changed this bleak landscape - and given back Tehran residents the stunning vistas of the Alborz mountain range that surrounds the city.

The Ehrlich administration stopped monitoring ozone pollution in Baltimore almost three years ago, despite the city's chronically bad air and the presence of the state's largest concentration of people with asthma. The Maryland Department of the Environment decided that keeping the monitors in the city is a waste of money because the state maintains six others in the surrounding suburbs, according to the agency. "You don't need to have a monitor on every corner to know that the air in one place isn't as clean as in another place," said Richard McIntire, an MDE spokesman.

WASHINGTON - The governors of Maryland and Virginia met with Washington Mayor Anthony A. Williams yesterday, as part of their continuing effort to foster regional cooperation on issues ranging from the environment to tourism to gang control. After the meeting, Williams, Virginia Gov. Mark Warner and Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. signed an agreement creating the Interstate Air Quality Council, to help bolster the progress in improving air quality in the area. The secretaries of the environment and transportation from the three governments make up the council, and will work to help meet new federal ozone standards and other benchmarks.

"Government should not pick winners and losers, but let consumers and the marketplace choose automotive technologies." THAT'S FROM THE Web site of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group representing Ford, General Motors, Toyota and other car builders. And here's where that fine philosophy has gotten us, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article: "The average fuel economy of new vehicles sold in the U.S. has been worsening since the late 1980s, the result of the increased popularity of SUVs and pickup trucks."

Bush's budget hurts the poor and the planet Hooray for The Sun. We all need to see how the disaster of a budget put forth by President Bush will hurt those who need help the most ("Cuts called threats to bay, urban poor," Feb. 8). Community development programs for low-income people, food stamps, veterans' programs, health and human services programs, including some that deal with epidemics and chronic diseases, all face cuts in funding. Mr. Bush wants to lower the deficit, and that's a good thing.

Tougher rules improve quality of the state's air Surely, there is some rule in journalism that forbids alliteration at the expense of accuracy, as when Tom Pelton described Maryland's air quality regulations as being "like laissez-faire Louisiana" -- clever writing, perhaps, but woefully inaccurate ("Md. trails other states in fight against dirty air," Oct. 10). Since 1990, Maryland has adopted local controls that have reduced our air pollution by 40 percent; the rest of the country, including our neighbors to the Midwest and South who export pollution to Maryland, have only reduced local pollution by 20 percent.

Harford County is among the nation's most polluted counties in terms of ozone levels, according to the latest figures from the Environmental Protection Agency. Likewise, Maryland is one of 31 states failing to meet EPA health standards for ground-level ozone. But it is not all bad news. "There has been a dramatic reduction in the amount of what we used to produce," said Randy Mosier, an air quality planner for the Maryland Department of the Environment. In the 1980s, the state averaged 20 days or more of ozone readings above national air quality standards.