CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has declared an Ozone Action Day for Corpus Christi.
That means the air quality isn't as healthy as a normal day.
And the most obvious thing you can do to help out is to stay inside, but obviously, that's not exactly possible for people that have to go to work.
One thing you can do is carpool or take public transportation to reduce car emissions in the air.
Trent Thigpen, the program manager for pollution prevention partnership and auto check program at TAMUCC, recommends not fueling up your car on an Ozone Action Day.
“Don’t fill up your gas tank with gasoline because that pushes vapors out into the air. Don’t do lawn maintenance, mowers, edgers that use gasoline because those actually make more pollution than cars do," he said.
He also recommends turning off your car when you're not driving because that helps prevent emissions from mixing with the sun and the other pollutants to make ozone.
And when it comes to electricity, many in the Coastal like to crank their air conditioner on full blast. But on an Ozone Action Day, it's recommended you bring the temperature up and use up less electricity whether it's the air conditioner or other appliances.
Gretchen Arnold, the interim executive director for the Coastal Bend Air Quality Partnership, said the TCEQ can tell there is too much ozone in the air because there are two regulatory ozone monitors that measure the fourth highest ozone layer reading for the year and that determines if we are ozone compliant. She said the ozone in the air can also affect jobs because the TCEQ can shut down projects if their project leads to unhealthy air, which means people would be out of work.
“When an air shed no longer attains the regulatory level of ground level ozone, a lot of very harsh financial, construction activity, growth mandates can be imposed on that airspeed by the EPA and by TCEQ," Arnold said.
