Eighteen months ago, San Diego County finally met the federal government's one-hour smog standard.

And this week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged it.

County officials are celebrating, even if belatedly.

They held a news conference yesterday in which county Supervisor Greg Cox was able to boast that through pollution controls, the region had achieved the cleanest air since measuring began in 1955.

County officials credited lower-emission automobiles, controls installed by industry and smaller measures, such as less-polluting lawn mowers, for the improvement in ground-level ozone.

"We have fought the war with smog, and San Diego County is winning," said Cox, who, as chairman of the board of supervisors is also chairman of the local Air Pollution Control District.

The good news applied to a three-year period that ended in 2001, officials said. In 2002, San Diego County had continued success in meeting the one-hour smog standard.

But the campaign is not over.

The county has yet to meet California's more stringent one-hour smog standard and the federal government's eight-hour standard.

No one is saying "we're done," said Terry Ghio, who represented the Industrial Environmental Association at the news conference, but it does "acknowledge that we've accomplished something."

Paula Forbis, a campaign director for the San Diego-based Environmental Health Coalition, said now that the federal one-hour smog standard has been attained, it's important for the county to come into compliance with the federal and state standards.

"Certainly, air quality has improved, and that's something everyone can be glad about," Forbis said. "But we are not at the point where we can say the air is healthy for all San Diegans at this point."

In 2002, the county violated the state's one-hour standard on 15 days, and the federal eight-hour standard on 13 days.

Many of the violations occurred in Alpine, which sits on a west- facing mountain slope that traps smog-producing pollutants, said Anita Tinsley, spokeswoman for the pollution control district.

The ozone component of smog is formed when sunlight and warm weather interact with emissions from gasoline and diesel engines; solvents, such as dry-cleaning fluids and paints; and fossil fuels burned in power plants and factories.

Exposure to smog can cause breathing problems, chest pain and cough, according to the pollution control district. Children, the elderly and people with asthma and other lung diseases are particularly susceptible to the ill effects of smog.

The federal one-hour standard is 0.12 parts of ozone per million parts of air, averaged over 60 minutes, whereas the state's one- hour standard is 0.09 ppm. The federal government's eight-hour standard is 0.08 ppm.

John Kelly, an environmental scientist with the EPA's regional office, processed the paperwork to show that San Diego County had attained the federal one-hour smog standard.

What took so long? "Actually, we processed this request in record time," he said.

The county did not ask the EPA for a new designation until last December, when it submitted a plan to further reduce smog emissions over the next 10 years.

. Copyright 2003 Union-Tribune Publishing Company. Used by Permission