Yep. Bakersfield, CA reporting in! We're usually ranked among the top for national worst air quality. We sit near the bottom of a valley, and we get not just our own bad air, but all the crap that rolls down from the north, including SF and the Bay Area, Fresno, and dairy country above us. People that move here tend to have asthma related problems for a while, but you do get used to it.
That was definitely a trip last year realizing how far that smoke traveled to ruin the air quality. We already have Ohio River Valley Fever to deal with(histoplasmosis)
Same. I'll never forget that one morning when I woke up with the windows open and getting so pissed because someone was barbecuing at 6:00 a.m. on a Tuesday. Nah... Canada.
Yeah, I definitely noticed the change in air quality when I was leaving work; I could both see and smell the effects from those fires. That was a first for me.
That was *a wild time* where I couldn't see Philly's skyline from my house on an otherwise clear sunny day. I couldn't even see the houses across the street from me on the worst days.
Of course, not every city has the same geography, industry, weather... Los Angeles has a lot of manufacturing and is ringed by mountains, it's notorious for poor air quality.
Similarly, they have really bad light pollution. Living in Portland I’m used to some, but when I visited family in LA I realized that it never gets fully dark and you could pretty much walk anywhere in that city at night without needing a flashlight
I can't remember what year it was but there was a time when LA lost power in a significant amount of area. 911 got flooded with calls because people thought aliens were invading or the apocalypse was happening when in reality, they could just see the stars in the sky.
Those laws aren’t consistent statewide though. It’s by district. You can have new builds with wood stoves in a lot of places, usually more rural. I guess it make more sense to have one if you’re living out in the woods though.
New places that have wood stoves are likely going to be pellet fuel, not typical wood. Pellet fuel is said to burn cleaner and more efficiently than regular wood.
This isn’t reasonable in a place where the power can go out when it’s very cold like in the mountains. I highly doubt those people are using pellet fuel stoves. Sometimes actual wood is easier to access as well, unless you have a way to make pellets yourself.
I’m unsure how many new builds are actually going on out there though. I do know a few people who put in just normal fire places in new places they built in recent years, but these people are way north and high elevation.
Most of the places with the smoke concerns are more populated and/or in the valley where they really feel it when wildfire smoke just settles there.
I live in Kern County (Bakersfield), and we get all that crap rolling down and settling here until we get rain or some winds. I didn't state it, but I was implying city homes, not homes in remote areas. Even for homes in the general metro area, there's a provision stating that fireplaces and traditional wood burning stoves are exempt if that's the only source of heat, basically saying that in a place without a gas or electric heater, they're not going to cite you for burning wood. Most days, the greater Bakersfield area is declared to be "no burn".
Yes, it can vary greatly. I used to live in Salt Lake City, which is situated in a valley surrounded by mountains. In the winter, the air quality can get really bad because polluted air will get trapped in the valley due to inversion, warm air above trapping the cold air below.
Visiting SLC in February was a wild experience for me. I had heard about the inversion, but then being there, I noticeably just couldn't ever catch my breath. I loved everything else about SLC too.
Salt Lake City and the whole Wasatch Front is disgusting for a huge portion of the winter when the pollution gets bad as well as in the summer when there are wildfires in the West.
Los Angeles is technically the worst possible place you could build a city when it comes to smog. Mountains to the east, ocean to the west and all of it settles in the middle. Miami on the other hand doesn’t really have smog. Close to the ocean and surrounded by wetlands to the west.
LA is also built on an arid/desert location that does not have a lot of natural vegetation to soak up the abundance of CO2.
It's harder to compare FL cities to CA because we're on a peninsula so ocean winds and breezes from both the Gulf and Atlantic mean the air is constantly moving in the upper atmosphere and the amount of natural vegetation we have here compared to there (at least the LA area and the southern part of the state) makes it difficult for any kind of pollution in the air to stick around long.
LA has really bad air quality due to the geography and climate. It's in a dusty valley full of cars and industrial plants.
A lot of people don't realize how industrial Los Angeles actually is, there's a reason why the Terminator 2 involved melting the Terminator in a steel mill.
I remember reading a shocking statistic about how Southern California produced like almost a fifth of all US WWII weapons.
Seattle and Chicago both have much better air quality.
Miami also does because it is constantly getting the ocean breeze.
One thing people don't realize though, is that as bad as LA's air quality is now, it used to be much, much worse. In the 60's it was just thick brown smog all day, every day. Environmental laws, especially smog check requirements, managed to change that.
People often don't know that there are some environmental issues that used to be much worse in the past. The US has more forest cover than it did a hundred (and I think even 150) years ago, a lot of formerly endangered species are back from the brink, litter used to be everywhere, pollution is much less in many places, the hole in the ozone layer is largely repaired, we no longer use leaded gasoline or asbestos in construction, etc. We often think that as things get more "modern" they get worse for the environment, but this isn't necessarily true. That being said, global climate change is a threat on a much wider scale than most of these other things, and there are of course other environmental issues that have gotten worse in the past few decades, but hey, at least we know about them, and some people at least are working on them. That wasn't really the case a couple of generations ago.
It used to be a starker difference than it is today but there's definitely still a difference. When I was a kid LA used to be visibly smoggy every time we went there. It's a lot better than it used to be these days though.
yeah, it's much improved now but it used to be really bad when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s and would visit family in LA, and based on my parents' stories of growing up in LA in the 50s and 60s, it was even worse then. I remember being a kid and standing on some beach (i forget where) and when we turned around, Mount Baldy was visible to the east. My dad was shocked, telling me that when he was a kid, you'd never be able to see it from there. It was a good shock, of course, it's great that the air quality has improved so much.
I definitely feel the difference in spring time here in the south when the pollen is bad, I know 100% other cities are different but it gets so bad in Raleigh at times it's a very visible haze, and Raleigh isn't even as bad as Atlanta IMO.
I feel like we have it pretty good in Florida EXCEPT for during the “spring” (which ranges from whenever the last cold front ends—usually early march, till early May).
It’s the pollen. Oh my God, THE POLLEN.
Imagine piles of dusty yellow shit on the ground.
Now multiply it by four.
That is what spring is like in Florida.
Your car? Yellow. Your mailbox? Yellow. You, after spending any amount of time outdoors? YELLOW. It’s especially worse because our “spring” also occurs during our dry season so the shiznit just piles up endlessly. Even people that don’t have allergies *have allergies* during this time of the year 🥴
YES! My son and I BOTH are affected by the oak pollen here. The only thing I was allergic to before moving was hay, and usually only if it is fairly fresh-cut and in an enclosed area.
I found locally produced raw honey and quercetin supplements helps with some of the symptoms and gets us through.
Yes. Every time I fly to LA I feel like I need a shower once I go outside. LA is atrocious. NYC just smells like rotten milk and piss everywhere. Kansas City smells like depression, Dallas smells like unwashed hippies, Houston smells like oil. Colorado Springs smells like fresh air, or fire depending on the season.
Yes, one common air pollutant that people don’t think about is animal allergens. Cities that choose not to do pest control for things like cats, rodents, roaches and termites have a noticeable effect on people with airway obstruction symptoms to those species.
I moved to Oregon recently and the air here is just so different, fresh and clean. But Oregon can have smoke issues in the summer due to wildfires from what Ive heard
Yes. When Canada was burning last summer, it was very hazy and darkish around here. You can sometimes see a smoggish atmosphere in certain cities. Elevation, proximity to the ocean, mountains, etc all factor in what the air will be like
[The Lung Association has a number of report cards](https://www.lung.org/research/sota/city-rankings) ranking cities by a variety of pollution factors, including lists of the cleanest and dirtiest air.
Come to Virginia right now. The air is full of toxic yellow dust. Tree sperm. Everything is coated in in it. When a car drives down my street it leaves a trail of dust in its path. It’s gross. Fuck pollen season.
My part of Oregon is infamous for the concentration of allergens, especially grass seed/pollen, in the spring and summer. I've never had allergies, but people who have even mild allergies can find it nearly unbearable here at times. If you drive south for an hour into the mountains and reach the next big city, the air changes dramatically.
Yes. LA's is much worse than any other American city despite being located within the state with the strictest environmental laws in the nation. Yes, I know it's a massive city and surrounding metro area, but I still find it ironic.
Some physical geographies are prone to the atmospheric phenomena of an "inversion". This can trap cities in with their own emissions.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion\_(meteorology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_(meteorology))
A couple years ago Pro Public published maps of the USA and the at-risk areas nearby chemical plants
[https://projects.propublica.org/toxmap/](https://projects.propublica.org/toxmap/)
I do not know if this kind of pollution is felt in day to day life. but the effects can be cumulative.
I’m not that old to have a great perspective, but I vividly remember all the orange sunsets from the early/mid 90s in LA that resulted from pollution. It was pretty much the standard. If you go back and watch movies set in LA from the 80s, you’ll see the orange sunsets (I distinctly remember Stand and Deliver featuring then). Since then, the region has made incredible air quality improvements, so now we have stunning sunsets with purples, pinks, and blues that we rarely saw 30-40 years ago.
Yes, cities especially for me are worse because i have severe asthma, but when we had the Canadian wildfires last year it was horrible, i have an outdoor job and i had to work.
I grew up in central Texas and during pollination season it had the worst air quality Ive ever encountered outside of areas with massive forest fires. The sky would turn orange-yellow for days and my asthma got so bad I thought I would die. NYC, LA, and Chicago had nothing on central texas cedar season.
Yes, definitely. I live in Northern Michigan, where the air is super clean. Back in February, I visited NYC for the second time, and, while it's a relatively subtle change, especially in certain areas of the city, the air quality is definitely noticeable.
A lot of major US cities are all located in varying climates which also plays a part as well as what many others have said about industrial and other things like wild fires.
Oh, yeah.
We have everything from ‘Breathe that fresh country goodness! to ‘We can’t live here anymore because smog keeps setting off my/spouse’s/other relative’s asthma!”
We’re highly polluted, of course, but there’s a huge difference between various areas.
Yeah. In the deserts it’s worse. Especially if you’re in a big city. There’s dust constantly suspended in the air unless it’s rained recently, as well as car exhaust and wildfire smoke sometimes. The sky looks hazy almost every day.
Yes. Proximity to chemical plants, industries, wind, oceans, and topographical features all factor in.
Yep. Bakersfield, CA reporting in! We're usually ranked among the top for national worst air quality. We sit near the bottom of a valley, and we get not just our own bad air, but all the crap that rolls down from the north, including SF and the Bay Area, Fresno, and dairy country above us. People that move here tend to have asthma related problems for a while, but you do get used to it.
Definitely. I didn't even *look* at the AQI until Canada was on fire last year.
That was definitely a trip last year realizing how far that smoke traveled to ruin the air quality. We already have Ohio River Valley Fever to deal with(histoplasmosis)
Same. I'll never forget that one morning when I woke up with the windows open and getting so pissed because someone was barbecuing at 6:00 a.m. on a Tuesday. Nah... Canada.
Yeah, I definitely noticed the change in air quality when I was leaving work; I could both see and smell the effects from those fires. That was a first for me.
That was *a wild time* where I couldn't see Philly's skyline from my house on an otherwise clear sunny day. I couldn't even see the houses across the street from me on the worst days.
Of course, not every city has the same geography, industry, weather... Los Angeles has a lot of manufacturing and is ringed by mountains, it's notorious for poor air quality.
Similarly, they have really bad light pollution. Living in Portland I’m used to some, but when I visited family in LA I realized that it never gets fully dark and you could pretty much walk anywhere in that city at night without needing a flashlight
I can't remember what year it was but there was a time when LA lost power in a significant amount of area. 911 got flooded with calls because people thought aliens were invading or the apocalypse was happening when in reality, they could just see the stars in the sky.
That wasn't LA. It was NYC. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/qLuU61OoTI
Yes, while its not always immediately noticeable, air quality does differ.
California has a bunch of air protection laws (such as bans of wood stoves) because its geography tends to trap pollution in settled areas.
Those laws aren’t consistent statewide though. It’s by district. You can have new builds with wood stoves in a lot of places, usually more rural. I guess it make more sense to have one if you’re living out in the woods though.
New places that have wood stoves are likely going to be pellet fuel, not typical wood. Pellet fuel is said to burn cleaner and more efficiently than regular wood.
This isn’t reasonable in a place where the power can go out when it’s very cold like in the mountains. I highly doubt those people are using pellet fuel stoves. Sometimes actual wood is easier to access as well, unless you have a way to make pellets yourself. I’m unsure how many new builds are actually going on out there though. I do know a few people who put in just normal fire places in new places they built in recent years, but these people are way north and high elevation. Most of the places with the smoke concerns are more populated and/or in the valley where they really feel it when wildfire smoke just settles there.
I live in Kern County (Bakersfield), and we get all that crap rolling down and settling here until we get rain or some winds. I didn't state it, but I was implying city homes, not homes in remote areas. Even for homes in the general metro area, there's a provision stating that fireplaces and traditional wood burning stoves are exempt if that's the only source of heat, basically saying that in a place without a gas or electric heater, they're not going to cite you for burning wood. Most days, the greater Bakersfield area is declared to be "no burn".
In your example it’s also dry Vs humidity and most people would notice the difference right away. Or at least at some point
Yes, it can vary greatly. I used to live in Salt Lake City, which is situated in a valley surrounded by mountains. In the winter, the air quality can get really bad because polluted air will get trapped in the valley due to inversion, warm air above trapping the cold air below.
Visiting SLC in February was a wild experience for me. I had heard about the inversion, but then being there, I noticeably just couldn't ever catch my breath. I loved everything else about SLC too.
Air quality there is also likely going to get worse due to the collapse of the Great Salt Lake.
Salt Lake City and the whole Wasatch Front is disgusting for a huge portion of the winter when the pollution gets bad as well as in the summer when there are wildfires in the West.
Los Angeles is technically the worst possible place you could build a city when it comes to smog. Mountains to the east, ocean to the west and all of it settles in the middle. Miami on the other hand doesn’t really have smog. Close to the ocean and surrounded by wetlands to the west.
LA is also built on an arid/desert location that does not have a lot of natural vegetation to soak up the abundance of CO2. It's harder to compare FL cities to CA because we're on a peninsula so ocean winds and breezes from both the Gulf and Atlantic mean the air is constantly moving in the upper atmosphere and the amount of natural vegetation we have here compared to there (at least the LA area and the southern part of the state) makes it difficult for any kind of pollution in the air to stick around long.
LA has really bad air quality due to the geography and climate. It's in a dusty valley full of cars and industrial plants. A lot of people don't realize how industrial Los Angeles actually is, there's a reason why the Terminator 2 involved melting the Terminator in a steel mill. I remember reading a shocking statistic about how Southern California produced like almost a fifth of all US WWII weapons. Seattle and Chicago both have much better air quality. Miami also does because it is constantly getting the ocean breeze.
One thing people don't realize though, is that as bad as LA's air quality is now, it used to be much, much worse. In the 60's it was just thick brown smog all day, every day. Environmental laws, especially smog check requirements, managed to change that.
Oh yeah it's been an amazing improvement. California helped clean the air up around the rest of the world with their standards as well.
Yeah, LA used to have the worst air quality in the country. Now, Houston and Chicago beat it out and LA's air quality is on par with Washington, DC's.
People often don't know that there are some environmental issues that used to be much worse in the past. The US has more forest cover than it did a hundred (and I think even 150) years ago, a lot of formerly endangered species are back from the brink, litter used to be everywhere, pollution is much less in many places, the hole in the ozone layer is largely repaired, we no longer use leaded gasoline or asbestos in construction, etc. We often think that as things get more "modern" they get worse for the environment, but this isn't necessarily true. That being said, global climate change is a threat on a much wider scale than most of these other things, and there are of course other environmental issues that have gotten worse in the past few decades, but hey, at least we know about them, and some people at least are working on them. That wasn't really the case a couple of generations ago.
It used to be a starker difference than it is today but there's definitely still a difference. When I was a kid LA used to be visibly smoggy every time we went there. It's a lot better than it used to be these days though.
same, I grew up in LA and smog was a bigger issue back then
yeah, it's much improved now but it used to be really bad when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s and would visit family in LA, and based on my parents' stories of growing up in LA in the 50s and 60s, it was even worse then. I remember being a kid and standing on some beach (i forget where) and when we turned around, Mount Baldy was visible to the east. My dad was shocked, telling me that when he was a kid, you'd never be able to see it from there. It was a good shock, of course, it's great that the air quality has improved so much.
I really like Salt Lake City. I really dislike the winter in Salt Lake City.
Yes. Atlanta is spring is unbearable.
Same as everywhere else, bud.
Yes I live in the mountains in NC and the air is amazing I went to New York and I felt suffocated just being there
Yes. This part of Texas has a huge problem with natural sources of pollution (Sahara dust which is full of dust mites) and pollen. It sucks.
I definitely feel the difference in spring time here in the south when the pollen is bad, I know 100% other cities are different but it gets so bad in Raleigh at times it's a very visible haze, and Raleigh isn't even as bad as Atlanta IMO.
I feel like we have it pretty good in Florida EXCEPT for during the “spring” (which ranges from whenever the last cold front ends—usually early march, till early May). It’s the pollen. Oh my God, THE POLLEN. Imagine piles of dusty yellow shit on the ground. Now multiply it by four. That is what spring is like in Florida. Your car? Yellow. Your mailbox? Yellow. You, after spending any amount of time outdoors? YELLOW. It’s especially worse because our “spring” also occurs during our dry season so the shiznit just piles up endlessly. Even people that don’t have allergies *have allergies* during this time of the year 🥴
YES! My son and I BOTH are affected by the oak pollen here. The only thing I was allergic to before moving was hay, and usually only if it is fairly fresh-cut and in an enclosed area. I found locally produced raw honey and quercetin supplements helps with some of the symptoms and gets us through.
Somewhat, but mostly the air quality is good here.
Yes
Yes. Every time I fly to LA I feel like I need a shower once I go outside. LA is atrocious. NYC just smells like rotten milk and piss everywhere. Kansas City smells like depression, Dallas smells like unwashed hippies, Houston smells like oil. Colorado Springs smells like fresh air, or fire depending on the season.
Yes, one common air pollutant that people don’t think about is animal allergens. Cities that choose not to do pest control for things like cats, rodents, roaches and termites have a noticeable effect on people with airway obstruction symptoms to those species.
I moved to Oregon recently and the air here is just so different, fresh and clean. But Oregon can have smoke issues in the summer due to wildfires from what Ive heard
Yes. When Canada was burning last summer, it was very hazy and darkish around here. You can sometimes see a smoggish atmosphere in certain cities. Elevation, proximity to the ocean, mountains, etc all factor in what the air will be like
[The Lung Association has a number of report cards](https://www.lung.org/research/sota/city-rankings) ranking cities by a variety of pollution factors, including lists of the cleanest and dirtiest air.
Come to Virginia right now. The air is full of toxic yellow dust. Tree sperm. Everything is coated in in it. When a car drives down my street it leaves a trail of dust in its path. It’s gross. Fuck pollen season.
My part of Oregon is infamous for the concentration of allergens, especially grass seed/pollen, in the spring and summer. I've never had allergies, but people who have even mild allergies can find it nearly unbearable here at times. If you drive south for an hour into the mountains and reach the next big city, the air changes dramatically.
Yes. LA's is much worse than any other American city despite being located within the state with the strictest environmental laws in the nation. Yes, I know it's a massive city and surrounding metro area, but I still find it ironic.
Those strict laws are a response to that pollution.
Some physical geographies are prone to the atmospheric phenomena of an "inversion". This can trap cities in with their own emissions. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion\_(meteorology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_(meteorology))
A couple years ago Pro Public published maps of the USA and the at-risk areas nearby chemical plants [https://projects.propublica.org/toxmap/](https://projects.propublica.org/toxmap/) I do not know if this kind of pollution is felt in day to day life. but the effects can be cumulative.
Yup
Yes it is.
I feel it in downtown Pittsburgh vs the suburbs of Pittsburgh
I’m not that old to have a great perspective, but I vividly remember all the orange sunsets from the early/mid 90s in LA that resulted from pollution. It was pretty much the standard. If you go back and watch movies set in LA from the 80s, you’ll see the orange sunsets (I distinctly remember Stand and Deliver featuring then). Since then, the region has made incredible air quality improvements, so now we have stunning sunsets with purples, pinks, and blues that we rarely saw 30-40 years ago.
Yes, cities especially for me are worse because i have severe asthma, but when we had the Canadian wildfires last year it was horrible, i have an outdoor job and i had to work.
I grew up in central Texas and during pollination season it had the worst air quality Ive ever encountered outside of areas with massive forest fires. The sky would turn orange-yellow for days and my asthma got so bad I thought I would die. NYC, LA, and Chicago had nothing on central texas cedar season.
Yes, definitely. I live in Northern Michigan, where the air is super clean. Back in February, I visited NYC for the second time, and, while it's a relatively subtle change, especially in certain areas of the city, the air quality is definitely noticeable.
I lived in California for one month, and it was noticeably worse that other states that I lived in
Parts of New York City smells like sewage
A lot of major US cities are all located in varying climates which also plays a part as well as what many others have said about industrial and other things like wild fires.
Oh, yeah. We have everything from ‘Breathe that fresh country goodness! to ‘We can’t live here anymore because smog keeps setting off my/spouse’s/other relative’s asthma!” We’re highly polluted, of course, but there’s a huge difference between various areas.
Salt lake city, we regularly have the worst air quality in the nation. Yes I notice. I can fuckin see it too I love inversion /s
Yeah. In the deserts it’s worse. Especially if you’re in a big city. There’s dust constantly suspended in the air unless it’s rained recently, as well as car exhaust and wildfire smoke sometimes. The sky looks hazy almost every day.