What's the air quality in Sacramento Eastern suburbs? (Fresno, Oakland: allergies, living in)

[Baykings]

Does anyone know how the air quality in the east suburbs of Sacramento is?
(Rocklin, Roseville, Granite Bay, Folsom, El Dorado).

How about allergies in these areas?

[Hawkeye48]

Once you get into the foothills it gets better. Living in the downtown area though is like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. It's worse when it gets over 100 degrees. The combination heat and smog is miserable. The local TV and radio channels run smog alert days so you know when to stay indoors when possible.

[cw68]

The foothills can often be worse than down in the valley, since that's where most of the smog is created. When the wind's calm, it sits down there, but when the breeze picks up, the Delta breeze brings it up to the foothills. When the wind picks up, places like Jackson and Sloughhouse actually have the highest ozone concentrations because the mountains keep the smog from moving further east. The foothills also often have nightime readings of higher levels of ozone because ozone is depleted at night by fresh emissions from cars and the foothills don't have as much fresh NOx emissions at night.

Seems confusing, I know, and seems to be contrary to what should happen, but it's the reality. The foothills trap the smog that's blown from the valley, and can't consume it at night.

When you're coming down the hill from Eldorado Hills, you can see how the smog sits above the city of Sacramento, which sucks for me because I'm in Folsom!

[Team Mom]

There are VERY few days of visible smog in Roseville. I'm sure the air quality isn't perfect, but it isn't as bad as in town. We do sometimes gets poor air quality days, but there are usually the 100+ summer days and sometimes burning of rice fields is involved. My family has asthma and we rarely have any problems.

Allergies are a bigger concern March to June especially. Today my whole family is struggling with watering eyes, sneezing, and runny noses. A little asthma therefore too, but it's definately do-able and doesn't last forever.

[Guingirl]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye48

Once you get into the foothills it gets better. Living in the downtown area though is like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. It's worse when it gets over 100 degrees. The combination heat and smog is miserable. The local TV and radio channels run smog alert days so you know when to stay indoors when possible.

As an ex-smoker, its not THAT bad, but during the summer it does get smoggy on some days. Yes, there are alerts saying if you have asthma you shouldn't run a marathon, but to me its just common sense.

The good thing is that the region does get Delta Breezes in the evening. So it does clear out that smog after a few days.

Allergies, yes, allergies are bad in the area. Mine seemed to get worse with age.

[Tim Currie]

uh....yeah guys, actually the air quality is total crap. It's easy to see the smog when you're in the right places. The foothills ARE worse than downtown because of the reasons already mentioned (this again is easy to see with your eyes when approaching the foothills...).

Sacramento is number 8 WORSE air quality in the country according to the Lung Association's State of the Air Report. And luckily LA, Bakersfield, and Fresno are number 1,2, and 3. Good stuff

[CityGirl72]

I was pretty shocked - we flew into Oakland and could see the valley and it was pitch brown. Couldn't see through it!

When I lied there I never felt like it was brown and yucky - but I guess I enever really looked at it from up above

[Tantalust]

http://www.creativemethods.com/airqu...maps/index.htm

[NewToCA]

Interesting map, Tantalust. The bad news is that it looks like our air isn't too good, the good news is everywhere else you have any concentration of folks in the country stinks too, and even rural areas only have mediocre air quality.

I didn't see anywhere on the US Map marked with "A" quality air, and barely anywhere with a "B".

[Roma]

I didn't check EVERY state but I checked a lot of them and the only state I found a "A" or even a "B" is Alaska. But not Anchorage, that got a "F".