Dirty air is a long-standing problem at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, but data released this month show just how bad things got in 2021. A pandemic-induced surge in consumer sales, record-setting volumes of cargo and a logjam of more than 100 ships anchored off the Southern California coast that fouled the air with even more harmful diesel pollution than usual. A lot more.
At the Port of L.A., cancer-causing diesel particulate matter rose 56%, smog-forming nitrogen oxides jumped 54%, and greenhouse gas emissions increased 39% compared with 2020 levels. At the Port of Long Beach, diesel particulate matter increased by 42%, nitrogen oxide emissions were up 35%, and greenhouse gases rose by 35%.
These figures should be a wake-up call to local, state and federal officials who all bear some responsibility for the failure to protect people’s health and prevent a damaging increase in smog-forming and planet-warming pollution over the past many years. This is just the latest low point in an air pollution and health crisis that demands a speedy and muscular response but has too often been met with a shrug by the officials overseeing these publicly operated ports.
