Thanks to the bowl effect, with those ranges rearing up immediately, things tend to get trapped in LA and not be able to clear out like they would if a breeze could simply 'clear the air.'

I remember decades ago, my uncle, a retired USMC colonel and sincere student of early California history, telling me how the indigenous tribes who occupied the LA area at the time had a perpetual cloud hovering in the skies above their heads. That was thanks to their campfire smoke and only a rare chance to blow it entirely out.

It was said the haze of the campfires would often obscure the view of the basin from the eyes of travelers cresting the San Gabriels or one of the other chains and getting what should have been their first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. Those folks would assume it was fog but soon learned, as it never quite left, that it was a fact of life in the area.

Something called the 'marine layer' also adds to the general haziness on the SoCal coast - this is a chirpy but pretty good primer on that thick layer of fog we used to wake up to in the mornings and then see lurking offshore all day when we lived there.

The marine layer can be particularly vexing in the LA basin.

As the population exploded, all those bodies brought a rise in pollution, which compounds the problem when there is nothing strong enough to clear the haze and pollutants from the bowl. 

How a marine inversion over the L.A. Basin acted like a lid on a pot, trapping pollutants

...During the first weekend of November, a shroud of stagnant, hazy air draped the L.A. Basin, obscuring the local mountains and even downtown’s skyscrapers. Many Angelenos wondered what was causing it.

...“Definitely, we had a very shallow inversion for several days in a row,” said Eric Boldt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. “We had really dense fog and hazy skies. Nothing really cleaned that out until we had this offshore flow and our Santa Anas that started up in the last day,” he said Thursday. The inversion was several hundred feet off the ground, up to about 1,000 feet at the top, he said, and that was the reason for the fog and low visibility.

“It’s a marine inversion,” agreed David Sweet, another meteorologist with the weather service in Oxnard. He pointed out that the haze included fog and ocean air, and that the L.A. Basin is surrounded by mountains. So the ocean air comes in with onshore breezes, and is trapped by the surrounding mountains. The inversion then forms a lid on top of the basin.

During such times all sorts of warnings for folks with respiratory problems are broadcast, urging everyone who doesn't need to be outside to stay indoors with the windows closed and air conditioning on, but using recycled interior air. They'll even restrict the use of leaf blowers, etc., to prevent dust, ash, and particulate matter from being stirred up in the event of super dry conditions (like the January fires) or a heightened pollution event like a predicted inversion.

The L.A. County Public Health Department has declared a Local Health Emergency and issued a Public Health Officer Order that temporarily bans the use of power air blowers (including leaf blowers) until further notice.

These devices stir up ash and particulate matter into the air, further worsening air quality and increasing health risks for everyone and their pets, particularly for those with respiratory conditions, older adults, children and other vulnerable populations.

The order to ban the use of leaf blowers applies to all areas of Los Angeles County due to the widespread presence of ash and particulate matter in the air throughout the entire region.

It's also one of the reasons that Los Angeles is so anal about pollutants and always hunting down the next pollution-causing scapegoat, no matter how insane it sounds to the rest of the country.

There have even been studies that assert privileged, racist whites were pollution poisoning people of color in Los Angeles. How, you ask?

The theory goes that because whites own cars and live in the suburbs, that requires driving pollution-spewing vehicles. People of color, the study said, live in close communities under the freeways these cars use, often have respiratory issues, and are too poor to move. Ergo it's a cause-and-effect situation. 

Sadly for the proponents of that study, it turns out that LA is only 25.3% white, so someone of some ethnic extraction must also own vehicles.

In other avenues of approach, LA had planned to ban gas stoves and appliances in new construction as of January 2023...

Los Angeles is taking a necessary and overdue step in the fight against climate change and lung-damaging air pollution. The City Council voted last month to ban most natural gas-fueled appliances in newly constructed residential and commercial buildings, aiming to get the new rules in place by Jan. 1, 2023.

...but the entire CA effort to do so was upended by the 9th Court of Appeals saying 'nyet.' CA cities are busy on workarounds in the meantime in the guise of 'efficiency standards.'

Busy progressive climate cultists are always looking for that one more statistic, that one last study that will give them the data they need to shiv fossil fuels forever.

This latest one from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) may be a panini press too far for even the foaming-at-the-mouth fanatics in the anti-fossil fuel camp.

NOAA has it sounding as if cooking is the single most dangerous thing you can do to air quality in Los Angeles.

Not the fuel. The food.

DROP THE CHALUPA

The volatile organic compounds released into the air while cooking food contributes to potentially harmful ozone pollution, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers say.

NOAA researchers say the "potent and often pungent volatile organic compounds given off from cooking food are now responsible for over a quarter of the ozone production from VOCs generated by human activity" in the Los Angeles basin.

The amount of ozone produced by cooking in Los Angeles is about equal to the amount of ozone produced by volatile organic compounds from fueled vehicles, the NOAA study says.

Seriously?

..."We knew from our research that chemical compounds from cooking can make up an important fraction of VOCs present in urban air, but they were not well-represented in inventories or included in air quality models," NOAA research chemist Chelsea Stockwell said.

"Given the known chemical reactivity of these compounds, their omission from air quality models may be a blind spot when it comes to urban ozone production," Stockwell said.

So all those warnings about roasting chicken to an internal temp of 175°, blackening those hamburgers to 165°, cooking everything to within an inch of its life to save our own from the disease or pathogen du jour - the cooking's been killing us all along?

We have The Science™ to thank for coming full circle.

Now, those delicious smells wafting from the neighbor's house could become more fodder for a snitch line - a call to authorities in order to save the climate. 

THE RODRIGUEZES ARE AT IT AGAIN!

I can see the treacly, guilt-ladeling public service announcements now - 'Think of all the children trying to breathe in the basin.'

Los Angeles must prepare to decide whether to cooperate when the food police hit the front door...

...or not.

I'm an 'out of my cold, dead fingers' type, personally.