While residents of Santa Cruz are blessed with clean air everyday of the year, other places aren't so lucky. All of the states' major urban areas, including the Bay Area and southern California, had hundreds of air quality violations. In the summer of 1999 alone, there were over a thousand air quality violations reported throughout the state. The effects of such poor air quality can be devastating. Air pollution contributes to lung cancer as well as other types of respiratory illnesses, can worsen chronic bronchitis, and exacerbates asthma.
Air pollution is especially damaging to young children.
Because of the amount of cars we have going around, the number of cases of asthma among small children is increasing and it's a general public health risk. It's something that really needs to be cleaned up, and that's why I'm out here. Since it's conception, the ZEV program has faced major opposition from many segments of the automobile industry. Claims of outrageous costs, lack of a market, and horrible consequences to the auto companies that do comply with the ZEV mandate are common. The oil industry also sees the ZEV mandate as a danger to business as it could begin to slowly wean Californians from their addiction to costly and polluting petroleum based gasoline.