Big news coming out of the United States Environmental Protection Agency says that new air pollution monitors will be required next to interstates and high traffic areas. The new regulations requiring the instillation of air monitoring devices will affect over one hundred cities and urban centers across the nation, including Southern California.
In Southern California, where over one million people live within potential contamination zones that are within three hundred feet of the interstate system or a freeway, the new air quality monitors will determine the saturation rates of polluted air in the areas surrounding interstates, freeways, and highways. Pollution levels in these areas have previously only been determined with irregularity and never because of a nationwide EPA mandate requiring permanent monitoring systems.
With air pollution being linked to multiple health concerns and conditions such as heart disease, bronchitis, asthma, and even lung cancer, many await the results of the monitoring equipment and what the data will say about the air that millions in Southern California are breathing. The consequences of the upcoming data to be reported and released by the new air quality monitors stationed along the main corridors of Southern California could be drastic, especially in the area of civil outcry.
Civil action groups, neighborhood activists living along the freeways, environmentalists groups, and even whole communities are likely to be rejuvenated in their reformists causes once the monitors begin transmitting data on just how polluted the air along the major byways is. The likely end result will be far reaching popular demands by the citizenry that their state government does more to control and limit vehicle emissions in the state.