Information on exposure to air toxics is available from the District as well as state and federal agencies. Explore the programs below for more information.
Pursuant to California Code, Health and Safety Code § 44363, the District prepares an annual air toxics report that:
The reports are available on the District’s Air Toxics Annual Reports webpage.
The District’s Real-Time Air Advisory Network (RAAN) provides local up-to-date hourly PM2.5 and ozone air quality information for valley residents. Specific health guidelines are displayed for outdoor exercise based on five different air quality levels. The RAAN network can be accessed on the District’s MyRAAN webpage.
Assembly Bill 617 (AB 617, C. Garcia, Chapter 136, Statutes of 2017) requires the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the District to develop and implement additional emissions reporting, monitoring, reduction plans and measures in an effort to reduce air pollution exposure in disadvantaged communities. Information on AB 617 communities in the District can be accessed on the District’s Selected Communities webpage.
In October 2017, California State Legislature passed Assembly Bill 1647 (Muratsuchi, 2017), which establishes new state mandates for fence-line air monitoring at petroleum refineries and air monitoring in nearby communities. In response to the requirements of AB 1647, the District developed two new regulations that satisfy the new state mandates (Rule 4460 and Rule 3200). Information on this program can be accessed on the District’s Petroleum Refinery Air Monitoring webpage.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed AirToxScreen as a screening tool to identify which pollutants, emission sources and places merit study of possible risks to public health from air toxics. AirToxScreen gives a snapshot of outdoor air quality with respect to of air toxics. It suggests the long-term risks to human health if air toxics emissions are steady over time. AirToxScreen has replaced the National Air Toxics Assessment. This data can be accessed on EPA’s website:
CARB maintains a facility search tool that can be used to query stationary point source criteria pollutant and air toxics emissions in a given inventory reporting year, as well as information on facility risk. The tool can be accessed on CARB’s Facility Search Tool website.
CARB maintains a Pollution Mapping Tool which provides emissions data for toxic air pollutants, criteria pollutants and greenhouse gases (GHG) from large facilities in California. The tool can be accessed on CARB’s Pollution Mapping Tool - Sources In Your Community website.
The California Toxics Inventory (CTI) provides toxic emissions estimates from stationary (point and aggregated point), area-wide, on-road mobile (gasoline and diesel), off-road mobile (gasoline, diesel, and other), and natural sources. The CTI is developed by speciating ARB estimates of Total Organic Gas (TOG) and Particulate Matter (PM) for area, mobile, and natural sources using the most recent speciation profiles. Speciated emissions for each source category are then reconciled with reported stationary point source toxics data to establish a complete inventory. The CTI can be accessed on CARB’s California Toxics Inventory webpage.
CalEnviroScreen is a mapping tool created by California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) that helps identify California communities that are most affected by many sources of pollution, and where people are often especially vulnerable to pollution's effects. CalEnviroScreen uses environmental, health, and socioeconomic information to produce scores for every census tract in the state. The scores are mapped so that different communities can be compared. An area with a high score is one that experiences a much higher pollution burden than areas with low scores. CalEnviroScreen ranks communities based on data that are available from state and federal government sources. The tool can be accessed on OEHHA’s CalEnviroScreen website.
