Imagery and Mapping - Eric Brummett

Images and maps with Data

The two pictures below are historical images from the mid to late 1940’s. As shown, the smog in the air made it hard to even see a short distance in front of you. The first Picture shows a view from a building balcony that gives a visual of how bad the pollution was and gives context to why many believed it to be a chemical attack. The second picture is interesting because the main subject of interest is wearing a gas mask. This was probably something from the Flu pandemic that plagued the world in 1918. It may seem a little extreme if the viewer did not know how bad the air quality really was. If you look closely, you'll see that the woman to the left is wiping their eyes with handkerchiefs and one of them looks as though she was coughing. These images are important to see and relate to the one from just last year and see how the only difference is location and the people.

*Photo From a Balcony overlooking a main street in LA

*Photo of a man in a gas mask, and women showing effects of the smog.

I felt that this image was important to tie in the historical progress with what it really looks like in today's world. While there is research and graphs that have shown a decrease in exposure to smog from the 1940’s and through to today, there are still days like this. This picture was taken September 11th, 2020 near a photo op point for the Hollywood Sign. It has a striking resemblance to the two photos above from the 1940’s. This is one of those moments that are a product of an over exposure of ozone that happens, according to the map and chart below, about 100 or so days out of the year in the LA area.

This image represents all of California. As represented, the darker blue means more days with over exposure of ozone. The time line goes from 1990 to 2018. It shows how coming out of SoCal and going up north is more clean air and in some places up north, there is not even enough pollution to be relevant. This is because in Southern California, in particular in the LA area, there are more metro areas and a denser population. The geographic characteristics also play a major role because of the way pollutants in the air get trapped pretty low and close to the ground. In this area, according to the mapping above, it stays in the dark/light blue for most of the 28 years. There has been some progress that can be tracked through the early 2000’s and starting in 2005, this area stayed in the light blue, which is a high of 149 days of over exposure, up to present time. There has not been less than 100 days of over exposure in the LA area in the past 28 years even with the progress that has been made.

Even Though the emission restriction and research pertaining to smog in LA have been going on since the early 1950’s it is only in the past 30 years that we see a difference. The progressive of getting cleaner air in the LA area took off in 1970 with the Clean Air Act. This graph is a better representation of the timeline of the amount of days per year of over exposure of the Ozone. As shown, the peak was in the 1980’s, in this time the catalytic converter was just starting to make its way into every vehicle. At this time there was also the push of more fuel efficient vehicles. California has also moved, during this time, to targeting the greenhouse gases from industry to combat global warming. Over the last 3 decades represented by this graph, there have been 20% fewer asthma cases in California from smog exposure.

Sources For Images/ other sources

Barboza, Tony. Los Angeles Suffers Worst Smog in Almost 30 Years. 10 Sept. 2020, www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-10/los-angeles-had-its-worst-smog-in-26-years-during-heat-wave. 

Kaiser Health News. “The Healthiest Communities in America.” U.S. News & World Report, U.S. News & World Report, www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities.