Good news for Northwest counties. A new EPA listing of counties that fail to meet new (if 1997 can be called new), stricter air quality rules for ground-level ozone (a health threat and precursor to smog, not the stuff of the stratospheric ozone layer) omits all of the counties in Cascadia except for part of Sonoma County, California. Sonoma is the southernmost tip of the temperate rainforest belt and the northern suburbs of the Bay Area megalopolis. A different air pollutant called “small particulates” are a bigger menace to health than ground-level ozone, especially in the Northwest, but still, good for us!