Science

Why the spread of organic farms may prompt growers to use more pesticide, not less

Published

9 months ago

April 15, 2024

Why the spread of organic farms may prompt growers to use more pesticide, not less

To help California fight climate change, air quality regulators would like to see 20% of the state’s farmland go organic by 2045. That means converting about 65,000 acres of conventional fields to organic practices every year.

But depending on how that transition happens, the change could lead to an overall increase in the amount of pesticide used by growers throughout the state.

So suggests a new study in the journal Science that examined how organic farms influence the behavior of their neighbors. Researchers found that when new organic fields come online, the insects that come with them may prompt conventional growers to boost their pesticide use by an amount large enough to offset the reduction in organic fields — and then some.

“We expect an increase in organic in the future,” said study leader Ashley Larsen, a professor of agricultural and landscape ecology at UC Santa Barbara. “How do we make sure this is not causing unintended harm?”

Organic farming practices help fight climate change by producing healthier soil that can hold on to more carbon and by eschewing synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, which fuel greenhouse gas emissions. Organic methods are also more sustainable for a warming world because they help the soil hold more water, among other benefits.

For their study, Larsen and her colleagues took a deep dive into the farming practices of California’s Kern County, where growers regularly produce more than $7 billion worth of grapes, citrus, almonds, pistachios and other crops. Thanks to the county and the state, there are detailed records going back for years about just how they do it.

The researchers examined about 14,000 individual fields between 2013 and 2019. They were able to see the shapes and locations of these fields, as well as whether they were growing conventional or organic crops and how much pesticide was used.

Indeed, a key difference between conventional and organic agriculture is their approach to dealing with unwanted pests. Traditional farms may deploy toxic chemicals like organophosphates and organochlorines, while organic farms prefer to keep damaging bugs in check by encouraging the growth of their natural enemies, including particular beetles, spiders and birds. They can also use certain pesticides, which typically are made with with natural instead of synthetic ingredients.

These contrasting strategies make for complicated neighbors. If destructive critters migrate from an organic farm to a conventional one, a grower may respond by using more pesticide. That, in turn, would undermine the helpful creatures organic growers rely upon. On the other hand, organic farms nurture beneficial insects that migrate to other fields.

“Organic farms can be both a blessing and a curse if they’re your neighbor,” said David Haviland, an entomologist with the University of California’s integrative pest management program in Bakersfield, who was not involved in the study.

By 2019, about 7.5% of permitted fields in Kern County were used to grow organic products. They were distributed throughout the county’s growing areas, though many were grouped into clusters.

An aerial view of farmland and orchards near Maricopa at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley in Kern County.

(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

With their data in hand, the researchers created a statistical model to see if they could find a relationship between pesticide use in a given field and the presence of organic fields nearby.

In the case of organic fields, they found that a 10% increase in neighboring organic cropland was associated with a 3% decline in pesticide use. For conventional fields, the same 10% bump in organic neighbors came with a 0.3% rise in pesticide use.

Since conventional fields outnumbered organic ones by a wide margin, the net effect in Kern County was a 0.2% increase in pesticide use. Most of that was driven by added insecticides rather than chemicals that targeted invasive weeds or damaging fungi, Larsen said.

“We think it basically comes down to a different reliance on natural pest-control methods,” she said. More bugs are bad for conventional farmers because for them it means more unwanted insects, she explained. But more bugs are good for organic farmers because it means having more natural enemies of those same pests.

The researchers also used their model to simulate different possible farming futures to see if this overall increase in pesticide use could be avoided. The answer, they found, was yes.

One way was to expand the amount of land farmed organically. In their model, going from no organic fields at all to 5% of cropland being organic was associated with a 9% hike in insecticide use in Kern County. However, if 20% of agricultural land held organic crops — as the California Air Resources Board envisions — total insecticide use fell by 17%.

Those figures were based on a simulation in which organic fields were spread out, maximizing the pest-control border skirmishes between organic and conventional fields. In a scenario where organic fields were clustered together instead, increasing their combined footprint from 0% to 5% of total acreage was associated with a 10% cut in insecticide use, and going all the way to 20% of total acreage was linked with a 36% drop in the chemicals, the researchers reported.

“What we basically see in the simulation is that while there could be an increase in insecticide use at low levels of organic, it can be entirely mitigated by spatially clustering organic croplands,” Larsen said.

Making that happen in a simulation is one thing; doing it in the real world is another. An organic almond farmer whose orchard abuts a conventional one can’t easily dig up his mature trees and replant them somewhere else. But as farmers switch more of their conventional fields to organic, these study results could help them decide where to focus their efforts to get the biggest payoff, Larsen said.

Likewise, policymakers might identify certain areas where they’d like to see organic crops and offer incentives to encourage growers to make the leap. In principle, it would be similar to the grants offered by the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Healthy Soils Program, she said.

Erik Lichtenberg, an agricultural economist at the University of Maryland, said the study made “a convincing case” that organic farms affect their neighbors, but it would be important to know a lot more specifics before concluding that it’s a good idea to segregate organic and conventional farms.

Among other things, “I would want to know more about why the fields are located the way they are, what you plant where, and how that relates to the pest-management strategies the growers are following,” said Lichtenberg, who wrote a a commentary that accompanies the study.

Haviland said the idea of clustering organic farms makes sense in general because it reduces the edges between organic and conventional fields. However, he noted that there are instances where clustering could make things worse.

Consider the glassy-winged sharpshooter, which spreads a disease that kills grapevines. Conventional farmers have tools at their disposal to control them, but organic growers do not. When organic grapevines are more isolated, the chances that an insect flies away from the field and “doesn’t come home” are greater because it will encounter a pesticide nearby, Haviland said. But if all the organic fields were clustered together, they’d be “drastically increasing their own problem by not benefiting from conventional growers around them.”

Haviland also emphasized that “there’s a misconception among the general public that all pesticides are created equal and they’re all bad, and that’s definitely not true.” Reducing total pesticide use is valuable, but it’s more important to consider the types of pesticides being used, he said.

The statistical analysis alone doesn’t prove that the addition of organic fields is responsible for the change in pesticide use, but Larsen said the circumstantial evidence for a causal relationship is compelling. The conventional fields that acquired an organic neighbor used to have the same pattern of pesticide use as their fellow other conventional fields, and they started to diverge only after the nearby field switched to organic.

“This is pretty strong evidence, in our minds,” she said.

Milt McGiffen, a cooperative extension specialist with the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at UC Riverside, was less sure. He said growers make a point of planting organic crops in places where they know pest control won’t be a big problem since they can’t use conventional pesticides.

“Mostly why you have have a group of organic farms together is because that’s where you have the fewest pests, not the other way around,” said McGiffen, who wasn’t involved in the study.

He said there are many examples of governments trying to accelerate the transition to organic food production, but he is not aware of any effort to encourage growers to locate organic fields in specific places.

“This study has interesting ideas,” McGiffen said, but “some experimentalist needs to go out there and test all this.”

Science

2024 Brought the World to a Dangerous Warming Threshold. Now What?

Published

8 hours ago

January 10, 2025

Press Room

2024 Brought the World to a Dangerous Warming Threshold. Now What?

Source: Copernicus/ECMWF

Note: Temperature anomalies relative to 1850-1900 averages.

At the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31, Earth finished up its hottest year in recorded history, scientists said on Friday. The previous hottest year was 2023. And the next one will be upon us before long: By continuing to burn huge amounts of coal, oil and gas, humankind has all but guaranteed it.

The planet’s record-high average temperature last year reflected the weekslong, 104-degree-Fahrenheit spring heat waves that shuttered schools in Bangladesh and India. It reflected the effects of the bathtub-warm ocean waters that supercharged hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and cyclones in the Philippines. And it reflected the roasting summer and fall conditions that primed Los Angeles this week for the most destructive wildfires in its history.

“We are facing a very new climate and new challenges, challenges that our society is not prepared for,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European Union monitoring agency.

But even within this progression of warmer years and ever-intensifying risks to homes, communities and the environment, 2024 stood out in another unwelcome way. According to Copernicus, it was the first year in which global temperatures averaged more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above those the planet experienced at the start of the industrial age.

For the past decade, the world has sought to avoid crossing this dangerous threshold. Nations enshrined the goal in the 2015 Paris agreement to fight climate change. “Keep 1.5 alive” was the mantra at United Nations summits.

Yet here we are. Global temperatures will fluctuate somewhat, as they always do, which is why scientists often look at warming averaged over longer periods, not just a single year.

But even by that standard, staying below 1.5 degrees looks increasingly unattainable, according to researchers who have run the numbers. Globally, despite hundreds of billions of dollars invested in clean-energy technologies, carbon dioxide emissions hit a record in 2024 and show no signs of dropping.

One recent study published in the journal Nature concluded that the absolute best humanity can now hope for is around 1.6 degrees of warming. To achieve it, nations would need to start slashing emissions at a pace that would strain political, social and economic feasibility.

But what if we’d started earlier?

By spewing heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, humankind has lifted global temperatures to record highs.

If nations had started reducing emissions in 2005, they could have made gradual cuts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.

Starting in 2015, when the Paris agreement was adopted, would have required steeper cuts.

Starting today would require cuts so drastic as to appear essentially impossible.

“It was guaranteed we’d get to this point where the gap between reality and the trajectory we needed for 1.5 degrees was so big it was ridiculous,” said David Victor, a professor of public policy at the University of California, San Diego.

The question now is what, if anything, should replace 1.5 as a lodestar for nations’ climate aspirations.

“These top-level goals are at best a compass,” Dr. Victor said. “They’re a reminder that if we don’t do more, we’re in for significant climate impacts.”

The 1.5-degree threshold was never the difference between safety and ruin, between hope and despair. It was a number negotiated by governments trying to answer a big question: What’s the highest global temperature increase — and the associated level of dangers, whether heat waves or wildfires or melting glaciers — that our societies should strive to avoid?

The result, as codified in the Paris agreement, was that nations would aspire to hold warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius while “pursuing efforts” to limit it to 1.5 degrees.

Even at the time, some experts called the latter goal unrealistic, because it required such deep and rapid emissions cuts. Still, the United States, the European Union and other governments adopted it as a guidepost for climate policy.

Christoph Bertram, an associate research professor at the University of Maryland’s Center for Global Sustainability, said the urgency of the 1.5 target spurred companies of all kinds — automakers, cement manufacturers, electric utilities — to start thinking hard about what it would mean to zero out their emissions by midcentury. “I do think that has led to some serious action,” Dr. Bertram said.

But the high aspiration of the 1.5 target also exposed deep fault lines among nations.

China and India never backed the goal, since it required them to curb their use of coal, gas and oil at a pace they said would hamstring their development. Rich countries that were struggling to cut their own emissions began choking off funding in the developing world for fossil-fuel projects that were economically beneficial. Some low-income countries felt it was deeply unfair to ask them to sacrifice for the climate given that it was wealthy nations — and not them — that had produced most of the greenhouse gases now warming the world.

“The 1.5-degree target has created a lot of tension between rich and poor countries,” said Vijaya Ramachandran, director for energy and development at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research organization.

Costa Samaras, an environmental-engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University, compared the warming goals to health officials’ guidelines on, say, cholesterol. “We don’t set health targets on what’s realistic or what’s possible,” Dr. Samaras said. “We say, ‘This is what’s good for you. This is how you’re going to not get sick.’”

“If we were going to say, ‘Well, 1.5 is likely out of the question, let’s put it to 1.75,’ it gives people a false sense of assurance that 1.5 was not that important,” said Dr. Samaras, who helped shape U.S. climate policy from 2021 to 2024 in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “It’s hugely important.”

Scientists convened by the United Nations have concluded that restricting warming to 1.5 degrees instead of 2 would spare tens of millions of people from being exposed to life-threatening heat waves, water shortages and coastal flooding. It might mean the difference between a world that has coral reefs and Arctic sea ice in the summer, and one that doesn’t.

Each tiny increment of additional warming, whether it’s 1.6 degrees versus 1.5, or 1.7 versus 1.6, increases the risks. “Even if the world overshoots 1.5 degrees, and the chances of this happening are increasing every day, we must keep striving” to bring emissions to zero as soon as possible, said Inger Anderson, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program.

Officially, the sun has not yet set on the 1.5 target. The Paris agreement remains in force, even as President-elect Donald J. Trump vows to withdraw the United States from it for a second time. At U.N. climate negotiations, talk of 1.5 has become more muted compared with years past. But it has hardly gone away.

“With appropriate measures, 1.5 Celsius is still achievable,” Cedric Schuster, the minister of natural resources and environment for the Pacific island nation of Samoa, said at last year’s summit in Azerbaijan. Countries should “rise to the occasion with new, highly ambitious” policies, he said.

To Dr. Victor of U.C. San Diego, it is strange but all too predictable that governments keep speaking this way about what appears to be an unachievable aim. “No major political leader who wants to be taken seriously on climate wants to stick their neck out and say, ‘1.5 degrees isn’t feasible. Let’s talk about more realistic goals,’” he said.

Still, the world will eventually need to have that discussion, Dr. Victor said. And it’s unclear how it will go.

“It could be constructive, where we start asking, ‘How much warming are we really in for? And how do we deal with that?’” he said. “Or it could look very toxic, with a bunch of political finger pointing.”

Methodology

The second chart shows pathways for reducing carbon emissions that would have a 66 percent chance of limiting global warming this century to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial average.

Science

U.S. Efforts to Cut Emissions Stalled in 2024 as Power Demand Surged

Published

16 hours ago

January 9, 2025

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U.S. Efforts to Cut Emissions Stalled in 2024 as Power Demand Surged

America’s efforts to cut its climate change pollution stalled in 2024, with greenhouse gas emissions dropping just a fraction, 0.2 percent, compared to the year before, according to estimates published Thursday by the Rhodium Group, a research firm.

Despite continued rapid growth in solar and wind power, emissions levels stayed relatively flat last year because demand for electricity surged nationwide, which led to a spike in the amount of natural gas burned by power plants.

The fact that emissions didn’t decline much means the United States is even further off-track from hitting President Biden’s goal of slashing greenhouse gases 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Scientists say all major economies would have to cut their emissions deeply this decade to keep global warming at relatively low levels.

Since 2005, United States emissions have fallen roughly 20 percent, a significant drop at a time when the economy has also expanded. But to meet its climate goals, U.S. emissions would need to decline nearly 10 times as fast each year as they’ve fallen over the past decade. That seems increasingly unlikely, experts say, especially since President-elect Donald J. Trump has promised to dismantle Mr. Biden’s climate policies and promote the production of fossil fuels, the burning of which generates greenhouse gases.

“On the one hand, it is notable that we’ve now seen two years in a row where the U.S. economy grew but emissions went down,” said Ben King, an associate director at the Rhodium Group. “But it’s far from enough to achieve our climate targets.”

The biggest reason that U.S. emissions have fallen in recent years is that electric utilities have been retiring their older, dirtier coal-fired power plants and replacing them with cheaper and less-polluting natural gas, wind and solar power. That trend mostly continued last year, with a few unexpected ups and downs.

The nation’s demand for electricity, which has stayed more or less flat for two decades, suddenly jumped by roughly 3 percent in 2024, in large part because scorching heat during the summer caused many Americans to crank up their air-conditioners. A smaller factor was that tech companies have been building more energy-hungry data centers in states like Virginia and Texas.

While power companies installed large numbers of wind turbines, solar panels and batteries last year to meet rising demand, natural gas use also rose to record highs, while coal use declined only slightly. The net result was that emissions from the power sector increased an estimated 0.2 percent, according to the Rhodium Group.

At the same time, transportation, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gases, saw an 0.8 percent rise in emissions last year. Gasoline and jet fuel consumption both increased as Americans continued to drive and fly more after the pandemic. Nearly 10 percent of new car sales in 2024 were less-polluting electric vehicles, but those models still make up a small fraction of total cars on the road and have yet to put a major dent in transportation emissions.

On the flip side, emissions from America’s industrial sector — which includes steel, cement and chemicals — fell by 1.8 percent in 2024. Some of that may have been the result of lost output, as two hurricanes and a strike at the nation’s ports disrupted some factory activity in the fall, Mr. King said.

“It’s a reminder that there’s always some bumpiness in emissions,” Mr. King said. “It’s not just a question of how many electric vehicles are on the road or how much solar we’ve installed. A big portion of our economy still relies on fossil fuels.”

One of the most striking findings in this year’s data was that emissions from oil and gas operations dropped roughly 3.7 percent in 2024. Even though the United States produced record amounts of oil and near-record amounts of natural gas last year, many companies appear to have curbed leaks of methane, which is the main ingredient in natural gas and which can seep into the atmosphere and contribute significantly to global warming.

Over the past few years, the Biden administration and several states have adopted new regulations that require oil and gas producers to detect and fix methane leaks. Many companies also have financial incentives to capture methane to sell rather than vent it into the air.

Between 2014 and 2024, U.S. companies appear to have reduced the amount of methane that escaped, per each cubic feet of gas they produced, by 40 percent, according to the Rhodium Group.

Several experts have estimated that greenhouse gases generated in the United States could start dropping sharply in the years ahead if many clean energy policies stay in place, particularly the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into low-carbon energy technologies such as electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear reactors, green hydrogen and batteries.

While Mr. Trump has pledged to scrap many of Mr. Biden’s subsidies and tax credits for electric vehicles and low-carbon energy, it remains to be seen whether Congress will agree.

That law has not yet had a major impact on the country’s emissions, said Mr. King, since it takes time for new factories to open and power plants to get built. But, he said, data shows that low-carbon energy and transportation now make up fully 5 percent of total U.S. private investment.

“That’s a leading indicator that things are changing quickly,” he said.

Science

How to protect yourself from the smoke caused by L.A. wildfires

Published

1 day ago

January 9, 2025

Press Room

How to protect yourself from the smoke caused by L.A. wildfires

You don’t have to live close to a wildfire to be affected by its smoke. With severe winds fanning the fires in and around Pacific Palisades, the Pasadena foothills and Simi Valley, huge swaths of the Southland are contending with dangerous air quality.

Wildfire smoke can irritate your eyes, nose, throat and lungs. The soot may contain all kinds of dangerous pollutants, including some that may cause cancer. The tiniest particles in smoke can travel deep into your lungs or even enter your bloodstream.

Conditions like these aren’t good for anyone, but they’re particularly bad for people in vulnerable groups, including children, those with asthma or other respiratory conditions, people with heart disease and those who are pregnant.

Here’s what you should know to keep yourself safe.

Stay indoors

Minimize your exposure to unhealthy air by staying inside and keeping your doors and windows shut.

If you have a central heating and air conditioning system, you can keep your indoor air clean by turning it on and keeping it running. Make sure the fresh-air intake is closed so that you’re not drawing in outdoor air.

Keep your pets inside

They shouldn’t breathe the unhealthy air either.

Check your air filters

Clean filters work better than dirty ones, and high-efficiency filters work better than regular ones. The California Air Resources Board and the South Coast Air Quality Management District recommend filters with a MERV rating of 13 or higher.

You might consider using portable high-efficiency air cleaner in a room where you spend the most time. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has information about them here, and CARB has a list of certified cleaning devices here.

Don’t pollute your indoor air

That means no burning candles or incense. If your power is out and you need to see in the dark, you’re much better off with a flashlight or headlamp.

If you’re cold, bundle up. This is not the time to start a cozy fire in the fireplace. Don’t use a gas stove or wood-fired appliances, since these will make your indoor air quality worse, not better, the AQMD says.

The CDC also advises against vacuuming, since it can stir up dust and release fine particles into the air.

Take care when cleaning up

You don’t want your skin to come into contact with wildfire ash. That means you should wear long sleeves, pants, gloves, socks and shoes. The AQMD even wants you to wear goggles.

If you’re sweeping up ash outdoors, get a hose and mist it with water first. That will keep it from flying up in the air as you move it around. Once the ash is wet, sweep it up gently with a broom or mop. Bag it up in a plastic bag and throw it away.

It’s a good idea to wash your vehicles and outdoor toys if they’re covered in ash. Try not to send ashy water into storm drains. Direct the dirty water into ground areas instead, the AQMD advises.

Those with lung or heart problems should avoid clean-up activities.

Discard spoiled food…

If you lost power for a significant length of time, the food in your refrigerator or freezer may be spoiled.

Food kept in a fridge should stay safe for up to four hours if you’ve kept the door closed. If you’ve been without power for longer than that, you’ll need to toss all perishable items, including meat, poultry, fish, eggs, milk and cut fruits and vegetables. Anything with “an unusual smell, color, or texture” should be thrown out as well, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease and Control Prevention.

Refrigerated medicines should be OK unless the power was out for more than a day. Check the label to make sure.

…even if it was in the freezer

Your freezer may be in better shape, especially if it’s well-stocked. Items in a full freezer may be safe for up to 48 hours if it’s been kept shut, and a half-full freezer may be OK for up to 24 hours. (The frozen items help keep each other cold, so the more the better.)

If items have remained below 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) or you can still see ice crystals in them, they may be OK to use or refreeze, according to the federal government’s food safety website.

Ice cream and frozen yogurt should be thrown out if the power goes out for any amount of time. Meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, milk and most other dairy products need to go if they were exposed to temperatures above 40 degrees F for two hours or longer. The same goes for frozen meals, casseroles, soups, stews and cakes, pies and pastries with custard or cheese fillings.

Fruit and fruit juices that have started to thaw can be refrozen unless they’ve started to get moldy, slimy or smell like yeast. Vegetables and vegetable juices should be discarded if they’ve been above 40 degrees F for six hours or more, even if they look and smell fine.

Breakfast items like waffles and bagels can be refrozen, as can breads, rolls, muffins and other baked goods without custard fillings.

Consider alternative shelter

If you’ve done everything you can but your eyes are still watering, you can’t stop coughing, or you just don’t feel well, seek alternative shelter where the air quality is better.

Hold off on vigorous exercise

Doing anything that would cause you to breathe in more deeply is a bad idea right now.

Mask up outdoors

If you need to be outside for an extended time, be sure to wear a high-quality mask. A surgical mask or cloth mask won’t cut it — health authorities agree that you should reach for an N95 or P-100 respirator with a tight seal.

Are young children at greater risk of wildfire smoke?

Very young children are especially vulnerable to the effects of wildfire smoke because their lungs are still rapidly developing. And because they breathe much faster than adults, they are taking in more toxic particulate matter relative to their tiny bodies, which can trigger inflammation, coughing and wheezing.

Any kind of air pollution can be dangerous to young children, but wildfire smoke is about 10 times as toxic for children compared to air pollution from burning fossil fuels, said Dr. Lisa Patel, clinical associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford Children’s Health. Young children with preexisting respiratory problems like asthma are at even greater risk.

Patel advises parents to keep their young children indoors as much as possible, create a safe room in their home with an air purifier, and try to avoid using gas stoves to avoid polluting the indoor air.

Children over the age of 2 should also wear a well-fitting KN95 mask if they will be outdoors for a long period of time. Infants and toddlers younger than that don’t need to mask up because it can be a suffocation risk, Patel said.

What are the risks for pregnant people?

Pregnant people should also take extra precautions around wildfire smoke, which can cross the placenta and affect a developing fetus. Studies have found that exposure to wildfire smoke during pregnancy can increase the risk of premature birth and low birth weight. Researchers have also linked the toxic chemicals in smoke with maternal health complications including hypertension and preeclampsia.

What about other high-risk populations?

Certain chronic diseases including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or other respiratory conditions can also make you particularly vulnerable to wildfire smoke. People with heart disease, diabetes and chronic kidney disease should take extra care to breathe clean air, the CDC says. The tiny particles in wildfire smoke can aggravate existing health problems, and may make heart attacks or strokes more likely, CARB warns.

Get ready for the next emergency

Living in Southern California means another wildfire is coming sooner or later. To prepare for the bad air, you can:

Stock up on disposable respirators, like N95 or P-100s.
Have clean filters ready for your A/C system and change them out when things get smoky.
Know how to check the air quality where you live and work. The AQMD has an interactive map that’s updated hourly. Just type in an address and it will zoom in on the location. You can also sign up to get air quality alerts by email or on your smartphone.
Know where your fire extinguisher is and keep it handy.
If you have a heart or lung condition, keep at least five days’ worth of medication on hand.

Times staff writer Karen Garcia contributed to this report.