Marin's Pollution

My opinion of Marin County's environmental health services is definitely positive. Having lived in the county for over ten years, I have experienced countless examples and evidence of their attention to the environment. Despite a smattering of affluent areas with a highly conservative population, I'd like to believe the majority of it holds strong to questioning their global footprint. There are more Prius' on the road than there are stars in the sky, health food stores aren't substituted by chains, there's not one Walmart, examples go on. The pictures below are from the Marin County's Environmental Health Services webpage. As you can see there a decent amount of programs ranging from sanitation, food, solid waste, medical waste, food recalls, and more.

You can see the number of facilities with emissions of air pollutants below with San Francisco on the left and Marin on the right. What can be immediately seen, all of the tons of pollutants added up in Marin is less than that of number one and two of San Francisco's. Only 1% percent of houses have a high risk of lead hazards and there are zero superfund sites in Marin County. This all is all within the parameters I imagined.

Air quality ranking is interesting. Overall Marin does look pretty good. The carbon monoxide and volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions is rather frightening. The EPA describes VOC's as "Organic chemicals are widely used as ingredients in household products. Paints, varnishes, and wax all contain organic solvents, as do many cleaning, disinfecting, cosmetic, degreasing, and hobby products. Fuels are made up of organic chemicals." I cannot honestly guess why this is, but definitely gives me something to look further into.

Water quality is surprising as well. The percentage of surface waters with impaired or threatened uses is pretty frightening. I would assume all of California's water is quite threatened, but the site doesn't provide much information about what this is measuring.