LA's Losing a Dirty Race

LOS ANGELES-The city’s beloved Dodgers have been eliminated from baseball’s championship derby, but LA got word yesterday that it’s still in the race for a more dubious pennant–the one that’s awarded to “America’s Smoggiest City.”

With billions of dollars in planned commercial development projects and billions more in federal aid hanging in the balance, it’s a race that LA hopes to lose. With only a few weeks left in the nation’s smoggiest season of the year, 100-degree heat and high humidity in Houston over the Labor Day weekend pushed that city’s air-quality levels down to the federal government’s “unhealthy” level. But in Los Angeles, 80-degree weather and mild breezes made breathing in the LA Basin much easier.