In Reno they have the green light, red light stages for whether or not you can use your wood stove because Reno has extremely bad particulate problems. We are not up to that point yet. Ozone in the stratosphere is vital for life on Earth because it blocks damaging ultraviolet light. At ground level, it can cause serious respiratory damage to humans and can also cause damage to trees and plants. More commonly known as smog, it is not emitted directly into the air, but is more of a chemical reaction in the air involving a wide variety of hydrocarbon compounds and oxides of nitrogen.
Ozone causes injury to leaf tissue on plants, which reduces photosynthesis activity.
The TRPA standard for ozone is .08 parts per million, the California standard is .09, the Nevada standard is .10 and the national standard is .12 ppm. TRPA's monitoring stations have recorded high readings of ozone in the area, which were in violation of TRPA's standards and bordering California's standards. Since only the TRPA standard has been violated, the agency simply goes through its own process to get the numbers back down. Some of those are better transportation modes for the Tahoe area. To bring attainment a whole different group of plans are discussed and implemented such as targeting vehicle emission.