Air Quality: The Ultimate Lifestyle Feature
I made it a priority to learn about the different communities of Los Angeles upon arriving here eight years ago; I was determined to find that particular neighborhood which would suit my family best. One of my non-negotiables quickly became: good air quality for my children. I am a true “Zonie” (a fan of Southern Arizona) and I love my fresh air. Leaving Tucson was difficult as the area has pretty stellar air, especially for a city; in fact, there were few days in that city where air quality was ever an issue.
As a newbie Angeleno, what I learned pretty quickly was that the areas west of the 405 Freeway offer a better air quality.
Recently the American Lung Association launched a campaign to assess the risks of air pollution and then published the 25 cities with the worst air quality. American Lung Association’s 10th annual State of the Air has identified Los Angeles/Long Beach/Riverside in California as the worst city for air quality. Now, what’s funny about these types of rankings is that they cover such broad areas. To say “Los Angeles” has poor air is not always specifically helpful, since the greater Los Angeles area is huge, and there are significant differences in air from neighborhood to neighborhood.
As a general rule, the closer a neighborhood is to the ocean, the more the air quality improves, so Westside communities such as Santa Monica, Malibu, Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, and Venice seem to have considerably better air quality. Of course, there are exceptions to the clean-air-near-ocean rule. Some believe that the area near the port of San Pedro has unfortunate air. And when the Santa Ana winds blow (usually in the fall season), sometimes air quality is reversed for a short while, as the polluted air from the inland counties is blown out toward the sea.
The South Coast Air Quality Management District website offers online maps of Los Angeles that show the air quality on a daily basis, with additional predictions for the next day due to winds and their patterns.
If you’re a fresh-air nut like me (and a fan of healthy lung tissue), then you, too, will want to take the time to educate yourself on the air quality of the neighborhoods in which you’re considering purchasing a home.
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Good air improves daily quality of life, I agree. Sometimes we call it “haze” because we don’t want to face up to what it really is: smog. The good news is, that the air seems to improve a bit each year in LA. I’ve heard that in the ’70s it was science-fiction bad.