Air Quality in The Central Valley

Unviersity of California Davis showed that healthy rats exposed to air like what is in the Central Valley developed lung disease . During the fall and winter of 2000-2001 , healthy adult Sprague-Dawley rats were exposed in six separate experiments to filtered air or combined fine (PM2 .5 ) and ultrafine portions of ambient PM in Fresno , California , enhanced approximately 20-fold above outdoor levels The intent of these studies was to determine if concentrated fine /ultrafine fractions of PM are cytotoxic and /or proinflammatory in the lungs of healthy adult rats . Exposures were for 4

hr /day for 3 consecutive days (Smith , et al , 2003

It is important to note that it is not just a person 's lungs that are affected by breathing air pollution . In 2006 , an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association said that being exposed to fine particle matter air pollution increases a person 's risk for hospital admission for cardiovascular and respiratory diseases (Science Direct 2006 . That means a person 's risk of lung and heart disease increase when exposed to air pollution . And , it 's not just human health that is at risk from air pollution . There is increasing evidence that air pollution creates environmental issues as well

Recent studies have shown that agricultural activity in the Central Valley , specifically the use of pesticides and herbicides has lead to pollution in the Sierra Nevada mountain range . To determine the extent of summertime atmospheric transport of pesticides to this region high-volume air , dry deposition , and surface water samples were collected in the Central Valley and at different elevations in California 's Sequoia National Park . Results revealed that the highest residue concentrations were those of compounds with heavy summertime agricultural use (SETAC Journals Online , 1999 . This study and others like it have shown that particulate matter...