Posted on 05/07/2011 12:22:56 PM PDT by ilovesarah2012
Remember the fog that lingered over Beijing during the 2008 Summer Olympics? It wasn't fog. It was dirty air. Yes, China faces a world-class air quality problem. But before you get too smug about its smog, consider this: 154.5 million Americans, just over half the nation's population, live in areas where air pollution levels are often dangerous to breathe. That's according to the American Lung Association's (ALA) just-released report 2011 State of the Air.
The cities ranked worst in air quality? California metros like Los Angeles, Visalia, Hanford and Fresno. Bakersfield, Calif., ranked the worst in terms of short-term and year-round particle pollution.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Now, we can see the snow covered mountains and off shore to the islands nearly every day. Many days, visibility is nearly limitless.
Washington, D.C.
Horse pucky. The government threw asthma under the ADA and the welfare hustlers have been using it ever since. The American Lung Association has found it a way to power and that brings in grants from those looking to game the system to sell more natural gas.
Meanwhile, it turns out that asthma can result from a lack of developmental insult to the immune system. In short, air that is "too clean" can result in a hypersensitive asthmatic reaction. Then there was the addition of alcohols (especially MTBE) to gasoline, the byproducts of combustion are known irritants. All in the name of "clean air." The whole thing has turned into a destructive scam.
Ditto up here in the Silicon Valley area. As recently as 20 years ago you could count on smoggy days where you would see a layer of crud in the valley and you couldn’t see the nearby mountains. That would happen 10 to 15 days every summer (not as bad as LA). The environmental movement definitely has gotten visible results. If only they knew when they had reached “good enough.”
Exactly....the stories I could tell about running every afternoon in the late 70s in July and August where I couldn’t see 1/4 mile across Granada Hills and my lungs would be aching.
ALL DEMOCRAT empowered cities are the WORST polluters of the environment. I include not the usual environmental claptrap but also social pollution with their turd world Obama values and way of life.
Back in '98 when I was in Beijing I recall just walking with my mouth open made me feel like I had sandpaper grit in my mouth.
It was filthy, however everyone was working, selling, making money, or in transit to do so.
I SO SO agree.
It's all become a numbers game now. Whatever the Air Qualitiy Board, the ALA, and the whole medical establishment decide are numbers we can survive(!), are legislated. Seeking perfection, and a constant barrage of medical marketing that scares the hell out of everybody day in and day out, is their method of grabbing America by the balls to enforce government control. It's for your very life! It's for the lives of the children! *rolls eyes*
I wish people would undertand and accept that the human animal is darned tough. Scientists, mathemticians, and doctors are fallible humans just like the rest of us. Our own common sense is our truest guide. In our laws and political philosophy, individuals should always trump the consensus of an interested conglomerate of medicine, science, and staticians.
I'm grateful and glad for the environmental regulations that went into place because I remember (maybe you do, too) when San Pedro harbor's waters were literally the color of Orange Crush soda pop. It was disgusting -- wallowing in filth. It had to be cleaned up, and it was, and I think it was a good use of local government and the voice of citizens.
Today in So Cal, nearly every step on the freeways to supposedly reduce polution, increases it, and wastes hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars doing it. It's just ludicrous.
Wherever Michael Moore is at any given moment.
At one time Pittsburgh was the all time leader. Now, thanks to government policies the steel companies have gone bankrupt and the skies are once again clear so the jobless although they cannot eat, can breath the fresh air of freedom. /sarc
What people forget is that technology and not laws are what cleaned the air.
Coal furnaces were replaced by natural gas. Open heart steel mills were replaced by ones with electric furnaces. Believe it or not he U.S. actually makes more steel today (well, 2007 anyway) than it did in 1950.
That’s “open hearth”.
The American Lung Association is in Fund Raising mode.
Pittsburgh still ranks high on the ALA’s bogus listings cause they use one air monitor that is directly downwind from the nation’s largest coke plant (not the beverage) to assess the entire region.
I lived in North Hollywood in the 1980’s. My British cousin came to visit one week when the winds were blowing in such a way that you could see the smokestacks on the Queen Mary in Long Beach from the top of Mulholland Drive. I told him those big hills he was seeing were invisible in the summer due to smog.
If they did a “World’s most polluted cities” would any US city be on the list at all??
These stinking hucksters from the American Lung association need to be put of business already. They are nothing but a bunch of liars.
One of their polution monitors sits on a hill overlooking US Steels Clairton coke works. Another monitor sits in downtown Pittsburgh above a spot where the public transit busses layover and sit and idle.
For a while we weren’t getting any “Ozone Action Days”. So what did they do? The raised the standards, twice, so that the air wouldn’t be in compliance.
The American Lung Association are nothing but frauds and hucksters that need a good ass kicking.
Actually, that happened in Donora, Pa. About 40 miles south of Pittsburgh. There was a large zinc plant there and what happened was that an air inversion occured that lasted about three days and kept the polution trapped in the valley.
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