Three decades after the Clean Air Act, the air outdoors is much cleaner, even with many more people, cars and industries.
But indoor air, which some say is filled with pollutants, is another matter.
"It is an insidious kind of poisoning of our lives," said Fred Keeley, Santa Cruz County treasurer and former three-term member of the state assembly. A prominent clean air advocate, Keeley wrote a 2002 bill authorizing the California Air Resources Board to set standards for indoor air quality.
"What I call the 'indoor air pollution industry' fought very, very hard against it," said Keeley, referring to the manufacturers of building materials, household products and appliances, which he and other clean air advocates blame for indoor air pollution, along with other, better known pollutants such as tobacco smoke, carbon monoxide and mold.
So what are indoor air pollutants, and where do they come from?
According to the Air Resources Board, the prime culprit is tobacco smoke, which accounts for more than half of the annual cost of indoor pollution. But even in a tobacco-free building, the air is often polluted, experts say. Faulty appliances can emit ozone, which affects lung health; and carbon monoxide, which is lethal at high concentrations. Mold, bacteria and other biological contaminants can cause or exacerbate asthma, allergies and infections. Radon, a naturally occurring radioactive gas, can cause cancer, especially in smokers.
Building materials and furnishings can emit fumes of toxic chemicals like formaldehyde. Architectural coatings such as paints and sealants can also "off-gas" toxins, as can consumer products such as cleaners and detergents, personal care products and pesticides. Even something as innocuous as wood can release toxins.
Pollutants inside buildings vastly outnumber those outside, said Jed Waldman, who heads the Indoor Air Quality program at the California Department of Health Services. And the chances of breathing a pollutant released indoors are 1,000 times greater than if it is released outside, he said.
"Buildings, in addition to protecting us from the outside, sequester us with our pollution," Waldman said.
But not everyone is convinced that indoor air pollution is a serious health problem.
Some industry groups consider it a minor issue. Enforcing indoor air standards, they feel, could waste resources and divert attention from more pressing health problems, such as infectious diseases.
"Given the state's limited revenues and competing needs, we question the need for an expensive program that would impose new, unnecessary and possibly counterproductive regulations," said Bill Lafield, a spokesman for Washington, D.C.-based Consumer Specialty Product Association, which lobbies on behalf of manufacturers of cleaners, disinfectants, pesticides and other consumer products.
"Moreover, consumer specialty products are extensively regulated at both federal and state levels to assure product safety," he said.
Lafield, whose organization opposed the Keeley bill, said that there is already ample authority within the Department of Health Services and other agencies to ensure indoor air quality. He calls for better enforcement of ventilation requirements and construction codes.
"If there is a problem, enforce existing standards," Lafield said.
Keeley has no patience with such arguments. "Where do you want to spend the money?" he asked. "Do you want to spend the money, $45 billion a year, treating effects on people's health, or probably spend a fraction of that as an ounce of prevention?"
Regarding Keeley's bill, the Legislature passed a weaker version of it, which merely authorized the Air Resources Board to prepare a comprehensive report on indoor air pollution.
Published in May this year, the Air Resources Board report made such a strong case for indoor air quality regulation — estimating the annual health cost in California of bad indoor air at an astonishing $45 billion — that some lawmakers are planning to re-introduce Keeley's original bill in January.
This doesn't surprise Santa Cruz research architect and indoor air consultant Hal Levin, who coined the term "building ecology" to describe his work.
"Unless we are eating really bad food, or drinking really bad water, our exposures to toxins are dominated by indoor air," he said.
To address such concerns, the Air Resources Board report recommends establishing air quality guidelines for homes, schools and other buildings. It proposes mandatory emissions testing and labeling programs for building materials, consumer products and other potential sources of indoor pollution.
Many clean air activists feel vindicated by the report.
"It doesn't make sense to have strict control up to the front door and have the indoor air harm the person's health," said Joan Lee, air quality activist for Gray Panthers in Sacramento.
Lee said she herself has suffered from bad indoor air: when contractors remodeled her office in Sacramento, she said, she was affected by toxic fumes from new cubicle dividers.
"I got such horrendous migraine headaches that I would have to go home from work," she said. Lee acknowledges that indoor toxins may not affect those who are less sensitive than her.
Keeley is no longer in the state Legislature, but Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-Los Gatos, has taken up the indoor air cause. A member of the Assembly Select Committee on Air and Water Quality, Lieber says the absence of a comprehensive plan to manage indoor air quality "is a tremendous blind spot in California's protection of human health."
Lieber is planning to introduce in January an indoor air quality bill. She is optimistic about its chances, because Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has shown support for other clean air bills.
Some are less optimistic.
"Our governor is more favorable to the industry than he is to the health of the population," said Lee, the Gray Panthers activist.
Lafield said his organization would continue to oppose any indoor air legislation. One of its concerns, he said, is that such legislation may take too narrow a view of consumer products, viewing them only as sources of pollution while ignoring their benefits.
"Many consumer products actually improve indoor air quality by reducing biological contaminants such as mold, bacteria and insects," he said. "We are part of the solution."
The ongoing debate on this issue may be partly because indoor air quality is a relatively new field — the first scientific studies in the U.S. started only in the 1970s.
"The oil embargo was the precipitating event," said Bill Nazaroff, a veteran indoor air researcher at UC Berkeley. In response to the fuel crisis, he said, buildings were made energy efficient, often by reducing ventilation. This led to cases of "sick building syndrome" — a still-disputed syndrome where occupants of a building become mysteriously ill. Indoor air pollution, from chemical or biological sources, is a suspect in such cases.
These and other concerns triggered the study of indoor air science in the U.S., which continues today at UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and other institutions.
More research is needed, both sides of the indoor air issue agree. In the meantime, Levin cautions against looking for quick fixes or blindly embracing products marketed as green or eco-friendly.
"The whole indoor air field is besieged with this phenomenon of wanting silver bullets--wanting simple answers to complex questions," he said. "A lot of the commercial solutions are overly simplified, and themselves often cause problems."
Contact Chandra Shekhar at tdunlap@santacruzsentinel.com