Last winter, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District received 3,777 citizen complaints about residential wood burning during the season’s 15 Spare the Air days. Those complaints resulted in a total of 346 warnings to wood burners in nine counties and 13 tickets carrying a $400 fine (See table below).
Aaron Richardson, a spokesman for the BAAQMD, said by email that the agency has only collected $800 in fines from the previous two winters, but that the chief point of banning wood fires on certain winter days is about improving air quality, not raising revenue. He added that early studies suggest that wood burning may be down by 15 percent from five years ago.
Here’s Richardson on how the BAAQMD enforces wood burning bans:
“We have about 70 inspectors on staff, and though not all of them are dispatched at any one time for wood burning duty, we send out patrols of various sizes on Winter Spare the Air days, depending on the day and availability.
“Inspectors must witness and document a violation to issue a citation. We track all complaints received and use those to help plan neighborhoods to patrol.
“They look for smoke, and are trained in smoke plume recognition and opacity, and they must go to the physical location of the fire to determine and document the source before writing a citation.”
Warnings and Tickets Issued for Wood Burning on Winter Spare the Air Days Winter 2010-2011 (4 days of ban) Winter 2011-2012 (15 days of ban) County Warnings Tickets Warnings Tickets Alameda 5 0 10 0 Contra Costa 5 1 57 4 Marin 5 0 48 3 Napa 0 0 51 1 San Francisco 0 0 1 0 Santa Clara 13 1 32 2 San Mateo 2 0 31 1 Solano 0 0 8 0 Sonoma 29 0 108 2 Total 59 2 346 13Source: BAAQMD
This season, first time offenders, who would have previously received a warning letter, will now be obliged to take an online class on the public health impacts of wood smoke.
While Thursday is not a Spare the Air day, the BAAQMD is asking people to voluntarily forgo wood fires.
Would you report your neighbor? Why or why not? Tell us in the comments section below.
I've been signed up for now 2-3 years and receive calls on my cell (from 415-749-5000, if you do not ans. it goes to VM) IF a spare the air day is coming yesterday, I got the call for today. One can always call the 877 number (after Noon) to find out if there is a STAD (spare the air day). Forget how I learned of signing up. All of this said, as previously stated, no way I would report anyone..
According to today's San Ramon Patch: Tuesday, January 8, 2013 is a spare the air day. I guess I should have the state notify the 37.3 million residents every time they expect a spare the air day or change their minds?
Yes, that is correct and I was notified, BECAUSE I SIGNED UP, via phone to my cell yesterday. ONLY people who have SIGNED UP would receive a call.. It is a 'recording' not a real person. Geesh, get a grip. I was only sharing good info..
Haber’s rule: a special case in a family of curves relating concentration and duration of exposure to a fixed level of response for a given endpoint http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300483X00002298 As for "independent, non-biased" sources, give us your suggestions.
And BTW, I am not a "liberal elitist. And I really do not care about making friends in my neighborhood (although I do have many) I do care about CLEAN AIR
I am shocked by some of the comments. So many people are so negative and quick to point a finger. How would you like to be known as the person who turned their neighbor in or the person who helped their neighbor?
Tom, Oh, Clever "Scientist" that you are....... You are conveniently "forgetting" to include one crucial variable into your equation: how the lung cells interact with and possibly get damaged by smoke. CONCENTRATED SMOKE damages (and destroys) lung cells more certainly, more quickly, and more irreversibly than DILUTED SMOKE, which might not damage the lung cells at all or might damage them in a way that is recoverable. Therefore, to the lungs, your above equation is not true (not complete/not the whole picture). It is not just about the AMOUNT of smoke, it is about the real effect, if any, of that smoke on the lungs. This is how Radical EPA-types always skew the facts in their presentations to the public. Would you really rather sit in a burning house full of smoke for 30 minutes......or go outdoors for 6 hours a day for 50 years and have the air be slightly smoky on some of those days? (In a smoky house, you could die within 5 mins.) Would you really rather smoke (deeply inhaling) 3 cigarettes a day for 50 years......or go outdoors for 6 hours a day for 50 years and have the air be slightly smoky on some of those days? The CONCENTRATED SMOKE has a higher likelihood of causing heavy, serious, irreversible damage or death, whereas the DILUTED SMOKE might cause little or no damage.
There is also the difference between inhaling cigarette smoke directly from your mouth to lungs (which probably has less filtration effect) versus breathing outdoor air through your nose to lungs (which probably has more particulate filtration ability).
http://tinyurl.com/3jbyual
OF COURSE concentrated smoke impairs lung function. But we cannot discount the effect of low dosages either. If that were true, we should be able to inhale low dosages of radon gas with no ill effect. It is the *cumulative effect* of dosage that is important here. The body can rid itself of vanishingly small amounts of poisons/pathogens but a long-term exposure to air particulates, even in small amounts, may not be expelled from the body. Do you have high cholesterol? this did not build up in a short time --- it accumulates in the bloodstream --- by the same manner that ultrafine air particulates can. If this were not true (as you claim) people could survive just about anything. True that high doses can harm and even kill quickly, but low doses harm in a different way, not via acute poisoning, but by slow decay of biofunctions. (e.g. alcoholism) Haber does not state the *mechanism* of harm, it just observes a mathematical constant of proportionality of toxic dosages.
NO, I'm NOT young. (wrong!) Born and raised in Southern California. Have a lifetime of SMOG in my chest, but no lung cancer. How could that be!?! Maybe it's because I don't smoke cigarettes.(Don't misunderstand me. I'm very glad for clean air. And I can attest that the air in LA is cleaner today, than formerly. But I don't believe for a moment that an occasional smoky day (from home fireplaces or camp fires) is a real cause of any lung cancer. And I still think the people with asthma need to take their own precautions and adjustments, rather than change the whole world to fit them.) IMO, since you started with the wild assumptions, I think that you must be senile. Go back to where you came from.
Assumption is the bases of all blogging; isn't it fun? Stay healthy P, because once your health is gone you really have nothing left. My neighbor died 2004 of lung cancer and a life time resident of Livermore; never smoked a day in her life. She died within three months of diagnosis. It was very painful for her. Lung cancer is not a joke. So keep taking (eating) your antioxidants and perhaps you'll live long enough to see a Republican elected president again. Thanks for the banter. Love the humor.
Read all your words, and I have to say you do have a point. I still wish you could put your brain power into more productive discoveries, like curing the ills of our leaders. Maybe something simple like getting the truck traffic to stop on 580. Let's move all the shipping down to San Diego or Long Beach; now that all the wealthy people are moving out of Calif it might slip by without notice. We need a solution for Calif, only problem would be no one would follow up on it once we got one no matter how good it might be. Peace.
I laugh at the name-calling, simple-minded, hair-on-fire types posting here. They probably all watch Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, and are brain-washed into a misguided mode of critical thinking. What a pity.
We gotta keep a laugh in our hearts and have a strong conviction to follow, then life will move along the right way. Thumbs up Tom.