We spoke with experts to find out.Bear with us, this gets a little wonky: Unlike other pollutants, ozone doesn’t have a taste or smell. In December, the EPA bumped Colorado’s ozone nonattainment area status from moderate to serious.

COLORADO OPEN BURN FORECAST: For those with permits for Open Burning, that is burning of waste materials or vegetation outside, check the following webpage to find out if open burning is allowed today:

However, according to Flocke and Pfister, the Front Range’s background ozone levels (50–55 ppb in the summer) aren’t much higher than other places in the northern hemisphere (40–50 ppb). And what the heck is ozone, anyway? The North Front Range’s air problems are real—but not all of them are visible to the naked eye, which is where ozone comes in.Last summer, an ozone monitor at Chatfield State Park measured the highest eight-hour average of ozone levels that Colorado saw all summer: 87 parts per billion. INSIDER analyzed EPA data to find the cities with the worst air quality so far in 2019.

Both sources emit both kinds of pollutants, but motorized vehicles tend to emit more nitrogen oxides while oil and gas operations emit more VOCs. So, even though our tourism economy loves to boast about all that sunshine we get here in Colorado, it gives precursor pollutants ample opportunity to produce the harmful gas.Wind patterns also play a role.

What Is Ozone, and Why Are Colorado’s Levels So Bad?

According to Pfister, daytime winds often push Front Range pollution into the mountains and, after the sun goes down, the airflow reverses, bringing the pollution back to the Front Range.

Sunshine is a key ingredient and accelerates the reactions that form ozone. According to officials from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), even though Colorado’s ozone levels are the best they’ve been in decades, as federal standards have become more strict, the state has had a hard time keeping up.Since 2012, Colorado’s North Front Range—or the Denver-Boulder-Greeley-Fort Collins-Loveland nonattainment area, as defined by the EPA—has failed to meet pre-Obama ozone standards. When it fills the air, it doesn’t form smog. “If we only had background ozone, we would probably never exceed the [EPA] standard, or very, very rarely,” Flocke says.“There’s no real silver bullet left that could be fired here,” says John Putnam, director of environmental programs for CDPHE.Over the years, regulations have been passed to improve or decrease emissions from vehicles, power plants, and other common sources of precursor pollutants. It doesn’t block mountain views. We talked to the experts to find out what that actually means. CDPHE is now working on the implementation plan, to address the ozone problem and bring the state into compliance with the federal ozone standard.“It’s not an easy job,” Kaufman says. You’ve probably also seen the notices along I-25 urging motorists to combine trips and avoid outdoor exercise on our hottest summer days.

Denver’s Air Quality Index (AQI) reached a high of 154 on Wednesday, March 6, exceeding the threshold for unhealthy levels of pollution on the scale set by the Environmental Protection Agency.

But that’s the place that we’re in.”Keep me up to date on the latest trends and happenings around Denver. “You can’t just say, ‘OK, let’s stop driving or let’s cut driving by 50 percent.’ Those aren’t strategies that really can be employed.”At this point, CDPHE officials say, improving emissions from cars is a waiting game: As old cars die off and are replaced by newer, cleaner models, the emissions from traffic will improve. In the meantime, the oil and gas industry is the easiest remaining target for emissions regulations.These ozone reduction efforts were in motion before the EPA started considering reclassifying the nonattainment area, but the potential for reclassification added urgency to the department’s efforts. Instead, the invisible gas is formed when nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs)—a.k.a. This leaves us breathing the highly reactive gas, which can and over long exposures cause lung disease among other conditions. In December, the Air Quality Control Commission adopted a slew of for the oil and gas industry, after a rule-making process that included key stakeholders, local governments, and the public was completed in the fall.

In December, the EPA bumped Colorado’s ozone nonattainment area status from moderate to serious.

Why is it a problem?

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With the average person breathing 3,400 gallons of air a day, it’s important to monitor air quality and pollutants. Pollen and Air Quality forecast for Denver, CO with air quality index, pollutants, pollen count and pollution map from Weather Underground.

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