Southern California has long been the smog capital of the nation.

Most days from May through September, we endure unhealthful levels of ozone, a lung-searing gas that forms when emissions from vehicles, factories and other sources percolate in the sun-baked atmosphere.

But how can we better live with this malady in our midst?

Scientists with the international EarthWatch Institute and UC Riverside are collaborating with a handful of Long Beach residents and are now looking for Inland-area volunteers to help answer that question.

Using a grant from NASA, they are installing backyard ozone- and weather-monitoring stations to get a handle on how ozone exposure may differ from neighborhood to neighborhood, street to street and home to home.

Their quest is to learn how things like trees, proximity to parking lots, and elevation may affect a person’s ozone exposure at particular locations. Such information could then be used to better protect people from the pollutant that irritates eyes, causes nausea, headaches and cold-like symptoms — and has been linked to early deaths.

Perhaps it would help if communities planted more trees. Perhaps people who exercise should work out at lower elevations to avoid exposure on smoggy days?

The data from homes may bring answers to such questions.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District now relies on about 35 air pollution monitoring stations distributed throughout the ocean-to-mountains air basin to get a picture of the region’s air quality.

But these stations may be missing what’s happening from street to street, explained Darrel Jenerette, the lead scientist on the project and a professor at UC Riverside’s Department of Botany and Plant Sciences.

“We might identify areas that are not in attainment (of health standards), and what may be improved air quality and degraded air quality at the neighborhood scale,” Jenerette said.

Six backyard ozone stations have been installed in Long Beach in recent weeks.

The researchers now are looking for volunteers for another 12 ozone readers to be installed in the Claremont, Riverside and San Bernardino areas. Another one hundred neighborhood sites will have devices that collect only temperatures and other weather data.

Data collected this smog season will be used for a trial or pilot project backed by about $200,000 from NASA plus private donations, said Mark Chandler, the Boston-based research director for EarthWatch.

Next year, the researchers plan to expand neighborhood monitoring in Southern California’s air basin to 50 ozone and 300 weather stations in what’s expected to cost more than $1.6 million, Chandler said.

And there’s plenty of ozone to measure. So far this year, ozone levels in Southern California have exceeded federal health standards during 40 days, and the worst of the smog season is still to come.

In Long Beach, Beverly Leifer was happy to help out when she saw a notice seeking volunteers on the Nextdoor social media platform. Leifer, a career U.S. Customs and Border Protection employee, has traveled the world to see polar bears, baby harp seals, tigers and other wildlife, and she cares deeply about the environment.

She also got rid of the grass in her yard and replaced it with succulents and other water-wise plants to save on water.

Tracking air pollution was just another good thing to do, she said.

“It has been here for two weeks,” she said of the ozone- and weather-monitoring station on her back patio that’s surrounded by special netting to keep her pet cats from leaving. “It looks like something out of a sci-fi B movie that someone built in a garage.”

It’s basically a metal pole with gadgets — pollution sensors, a wind gauge, weather vane, etc — anchored by a five-gallon bucket filled with concrete. Wires from the pole go into a plastic tub with a computer that collects and transmits pollution and weather data via wifi.

Leifer said it was ironic that the station was installed in her yard just a day after President Donald Trump announced the United States will pull out of the Paris climate accords. It is important, she said, that citizens stay engaged on climate change and other environmental issues, regardless of the leadership we have in Washington, D.C.

“It is my little way of resistance,” she said with a laugh.

Here’s how to volunteer

Workshops are offered to those who want to participate in the community air pollution and weather monitoring program and live in the Claremont, Montclair, Chino and Riverside areas:

Saturday, June 17, 10 a.m., at the Chino Basin Water Conservation District, 4594 San Bernardino St., Montclair; Tuesday, June 20 at 6 p.m. at the Chino Basin district; Saturday, June 24, at 10 a.m. at the Riverside-Corona Resource Conservation District, 4500 Glenwood Drive, Riverside.

For more information, call the Riverside-Corona Resource Conservation District at 951-683-7691, ext 223 or 207; or the Chino Basin district at 909-626-2711.