Posted by common sense, a resident of the Downtown North neighborhood, 6 hours ago

Air was noticeably brown and smelly today. Is anyone paying attention to these warnings?

CNN is whining about the air pollution in Beijing. They should come to Silicon Valley.

Posted by Think About It, a resident of the Duveneck/St. Francis neighborhood, 6 hours ago

The Air Quality Index from Redwood City registered as moderate, and low moderate at that. I don't think our problems even come close to Beijing, not to mention the Los Angeles basin, where I grew up.

It looks like Spare the Air days get declared for all counties when there are very few areas that are really polluted.

$500 if you get caught, though.

Posted by 100% bicycle commuter, a resident of Los Altos, 3 hours ago

@common sense: Fortunately, our air is very good compared with that of Beijing. And to be fair to Beijing, it looks like they're really trying hard to improve their air quality.

@Think About It: I could be wrong, but I think a StA day gets declared based not so much on current air quality (which we want to maintain as good) but rather based on local weather. Roughly speaking, I notice that any sequence of cold days during which the Santa Cruz Mountain skyline is washed out -- not fogged out, but washed out on an essentially cloudless day -- is likely to contain one or more StA days. The washed-out appearance comes from accumulating pollution that can't escape the valley because of an entrapping layer at altitude. So, roughly speaking, a combination of a washed-out skyline and measurements showing moderate to good air quality indicates that anti-pollution efforts are working.

Posted by common sense, a resident of the Downtown North neighborhood, 3 hours ago

Look at the 5 day air pollution forecast: Web Link

Most Bay Area cities will have unsafe air pollution for most of the next 5 days, unless people start doing something about it now.

Posted by Sharon, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, 3 hours ago

We can wave our arms all we want but

The facts are that the vast majority of the Bay Area heavy metal pollution and particularly mercury blows in from China

-which build another huge unfiltered coal power plant every 2 weeks.

There is not any toxic heavy metals like cadmium, lead, mercury etc in Palo Alto generated wood fire smoke

-just the pleasant smell of winter family home fires burning.

The local activists are barking up the wrong tree

Their saint- Al Gore-sold out to the Arab oil state for $ 100 million

Gross hypocrisy-but his right in the free market economy

Why are the enviro- activists so quiet as mice about Al Gores callous betrayal of them?