Small New Mexico Town Air Quality Worse Than Los Angeles

A tiny New Mexico town less than 3 hours from El Paso has such bad air quality, the air in Los Angeles is cleaner.

Yep, Los Angeles, a major metropolis that's home to almost 4 million people, has cleaner air than a small town with a population of less than 2,000.

Loving, New Mexico is only 170 miles northeast of El Paso, in the Permian Basin. That's the most productive oil field in the USA ... it's also why the air's a problem.

Oil and natural gas production is creating a "toxic soup of pollutants" in Loving and measures by the EPA to stop, or at least improve things, would involve a big crackdown on the oil and gas industry. (Translation; they're not going to do anything.)

Ozone forms when nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds — released from producing and burning fossil fuels — react with heat and sunlight in the atmosphere to produce a dangerous three-lobed oxygen molecule. The EPA says the oddly shaped molecules cause serious health problems: inflaming airways, making it difficult to breathe, leaving the lungs susceptible to infection and aggravating asthma, emphysema and chronic bronchitis.

- sourcenm.com

Way over 90% of the bad stuff in Loving's air is the result of oil and gas production and ozone is only a part of it. There's also a lot of ethane in the air which which come from cows, landfills or cars.

According to sourcenm.com: “It’s 99-point-something percent driven by natural gas.” The grant that funded these air studies ran out in June so they're not monitoring as much these days.

Think new funding will be made available anytime soon?  Me either ...