Posted on 07/02/2004 5:38:35 PM PDT by The Bandit
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Most people in Mexico City had never seen anything like this: day after day of panoramic views of distant volcanos through crystalline skies.
Unusually windy weather and decades of anti-pollution measures brought the cleanest smog-season air in the capital since officials started keeping records in the mid-1980s.
At least 61 days met "satisfactory" standards for ozone levels in the metropolitan area in the first five months of the year, which included much of the annual March-July smoggy season. There were only 80 such days all of last year.
Airplanes overhead sometimes seemed so close you could touch them. Skies were shockingly blue. People in downtown skyscrapers could count individual trees rising on the distant Ajusco Volcano, which is usually invisible behind a veil of smog.
It was too good to last. May saw a string of gray, soupy days, a reminder that Mexico City remains one of the world's most polluted places. June began with nine relatively clean days, but a run of bad air has followed.
Yet the spate of spectacular days offered the city's people a taste of what might be — and what once was.
For centuries, the skies of Mexico City were famed for their purity. In a 1915 essay, Mexican writer Alfonso Reyes called it "the region where the air is most clear."
Explorer Alexander Humboldt, who visited in 1803, said Mexico's capital was "among the most beautiful cities Europeans have founded." He compared the valley to Switzerland, praising skies that were "clear, and with that turquoise blue of the dry, thin air of high mountains."
The Valley of Mexico held fewer than 150,000 people when Humboldt visited. Now it's a concrete sprawl of about 18 million.
The mountains surrounding the 7,400-foot high city trap the pollutants of the modern age, often cloaking it in an eye-stinging haze. Officials have been far less successful than long-notorious Los Angeles in reducing pollution.
"In the whole world, there is no better factory for the production of ozone than Mexico City," said Adrian Fernandez, director-general of pollution research at the federal National Environment Institute.
On March 16, 1992, the ozone level reached 398 on a scale that uses 100 as the cutoff at which air is considered unhealthy. It hit 347 points on April 7 of that year.
Even before that, city officials had started to attack the valley's smog problem by closing major factories, restricting sulfur in industrial fuels and moving toward lead-free gasoline. Most vehicles were ordered off the streets one day a week.
Those measures dramatically reduced levels of the most dangerous pollutants such as lead, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide, although ozone and dust have been harder to conquer. Dust particles forced a smog alert just last Christmas.
As of 1993, all new cars had to have catalytic converters, making them as much as 100 times cleaner than previous models, Fernandez said.
The number of days when smog levels are "satisfactory" — 100 points or less for all measured pollutants — has climbed slowly, from 10 in 1991 to nearly 80 last year by federal measure. Under slightly less strict calculations used by local officials, the number was 112.
Unusual weather this spring helped, too. March and April saw a total of just 13 smog-trapping thermal inversions, compared to 29 in the same months last year.
Just as important, there are far fewer days of extreme pollution now. Eye-burning ozone levels shot past 200 points on 174 days in 1991 and 58 times in 1998, but there hasn't been a day over 200 in more than a year.
Still, regulators say pollution remains a grave problem — particularly fine dust particles. In April, experts led by Mexico's Nobel Prize-winning chemist Mario Molina proposed a 10-year plan for further improvements.
With so much still to do, officials are wary of trying to play up the recent spate of clean days.
"We can't say that. They'd attack us," Victor Hugo Paramo, who heads the anti-smog section at the city Environment Department, said referring to citizens still upset about smog.
Environmental activist Homero Aridjis, for one, isn't convinced there has been real progress. He cites the growing number of cars, continuing urban sprawl and the felling of woodlands at the city's edge.
"We advance on one side and regress on others," he said.
Awesome!
I lived and worked in Mexico City from 79-82. We could rarely see the volcanos. On the rare clear days I would stand at my office windows taking in the breathtaking views. The worst was when a municipal dump caught fire and the entire city stunk of burning garbage for weeks. Glad to hear things are better now.
...Can you say particulate???
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