A breath of fresh air hard to come by here

By CRAIG PITTMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 26, 2001

Every evening about 6 p.m., Beryl Zipkin steps out of her condominium to exercise at the pool. But not this week.

"Wednesday night when I opened the door to go out, I started choking," said the 70-year-old Clearwater resident, who suffers from emphysema after 40 years of smoking cigarettes. "I couldn't go out the door. . . . I couldn't breathe."

Smoke from faraway wildfires is combining with heat, drought and the regular mix of air pollutants to drive hundreds of thousands of Tampa Bay residents with respiratory problems indoors and keep them there through the Memorial Day weekend.

"This is a holiday weekend where people are trying to get outside, but that's not a good idea," said John Chancellor of the American Lung Association's Gulfcoast Chapter.

It's not just Memorial Day either, he predicted: "Now that summer is heating up, we're going to have a lot of days where we're exceeding air quality standards."

The state Department of Environmental Protection issued an air-pollution alert Friday for Pasco, Manatee and Polk counties because of the high concentrations of ozone, which it said could last through the weekend.

A key ingredient in smog, ozone irritates the eyes, nose and throat and can stress the respiratory system and the heart. It particularly affects children and the elderly.

Last week the DEP issued a similar warning for Polk, Orange, Brevard and Broward counties, said Howard Rhodes, director of air resources management for the agency. And in the Panhandle, the Pensacola area "is way up there" on the ozone scale, he said.

The Tampa Bay area is caught between a pair of fires sparked by lightning strikes. On Wednesday, smoke from a 20,000-acre fire in Lafayette County 100 miles east of Tallahassee wafted south to create a soupy haze in the streets of St. Petersburg. On Thursday, the wind pushed the Lafayette smoke out over the Gulf of Mexico, but a 950-acre wildfire in Polk County sent smoke floating across the Tampa Bay area. DEP officials blamed Friday's ozone problems on the Lafayette fire.

Although the smoky conditions are making the air hard to breathe, the wildfires are only exacerbating Tampa Bay's poor air, Rhodes said.

Pollution spewed from coal-burning power plants and poorly tuned automobiles build the foundation. Trapped by stagnant weather conditions, the volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxide bake in the hot sun, creating ozone.

With the state's record-breaking drought, weeks pass with no rain to wash the skies clean.

"I have pretty well accepted the fact that the last two weeks of May are always going to be the worst for ozone pollution in the state," Rhodes said.

The combination means that burning muck in the middle of an isolated swamp can play havoc in urban areas hundreds of miles away, harming people with asthma, emphysema and other respiratory problems. The American Lung Association estimates that 105,000 respiratory patients are in Pinellas County, 104,000 in Hillsborough, about 38,000 in Pasco County, 28,000 in Manatee County and 36,000 in Sarasota County.

Chancellor said his organization is advising those patients to stay indoors as much as possible until conditions change -- whenever that will be.

"What this state needs bad," Rhodes said, "is a lot of rain."

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright