Did you know that one in 10 people in the U.S. live in areas with unhealthy levels of all three types of pollution: ozone, short-term and year-round particle pollution? Now you do, thanks to The American Lung Association's State of the Air: 2008. Wait, it gets better. Four Pennsylvania metropolitan areas are among the top twenty-five dirtiest cities in the U.S. Pittsburgh is actually #1, baby, and the other cities are Harrisburg, Philly and State College.
Whoopee!
Here in the Lehigh Valley, both Lehigh and Northampton Counties get Fs for ozone days (smog). Northampton also flunks on particle pollution(soot). Lehigh gets an INCOMPLETE because it screwed up its monitoring.
Smog does little things like causing asthma attacks, coughing and wheezing, shortness of breath, chest pain when inhaling deeply, and even premature death. Soot is even worse, reducing life expectancies and helping lung cancer along.
Excuse me while I throw open that window and breathe deeply!
8 comments:
I was considering doing a blog (to complain) about the recent dust in Southside Bethlehem. The new casino construction has provided a constant cloud of dust while driving along 3rd St. and over the bridge.
I hope it clears up once building is complete.
"I was considering doing a blog (to complain) about the recent dust in Southside Bethlehem."
Awwww...poor baby!
Apparently you never visited Bethlehem between 1900 and 1995, when there was an integrated steel plant spewing 24/7.
Nope, I didn't move here until 1996.
I visited Bethlehem many times throughout my life because I had family here, but they didn't in Southside.
I guess you're not a fan of clean(er) air.
Love it AJ; it's just that by comparison, today's air is like Rocky Mountain pure air. Back in the day, housewives could not hang the wash outside, lest it came back in dirtier than when it went out. Cars and houses had layers of soot on them. After 60 years of such filth, Liberty High School's building was brown. They just cleaned it, revealing a color none of us knew was beneath. The point is that the stuff that's being raised by LV Sands is dirt and it's temporary. Let's all complain about something really important.
Like Barrack Obama's connection to Bill Ayers.
And what about the poor air quality that is more than temporary in the Lehigh Valley, in areas other than Bethlehem?
That should raise some concern...
Just because life was shit for you back in tha day doesn't mean things shouldn't be better now.
Also, how "temporary" is the dust in Southside? There's still a lot of land and construction to be done, both on and off Steel land. Citizen health and city air quality should be a concern during these changes, as they should all the time.
Can't make eggs bendict without breaking eggs. Can't build for the future ($800 million worth) without kickin' up some dust. You might wish to buy a mask or move between now and 2011.
...or blog about dust, whichever suits you.
A.J. Cordi said...
"And what about the poor air quality that is more than temporary in the Lehigh Valley, in areas other than Bethlehem? That should raise some concern..."
It does. Do you drive an automobile? That's where most air polution in the LV comes from. Dust from a construction project is probably the least of our worries. We can avoid construction sites; we cannot avoid breathing the emissions from too many buses and cars.
I live in El Centro, CA. We have on of the worst air pollution problems due to particulate contaminant, agricultural pesticide, burning of farmland, and our proximity to Mexico and the New River, which is the second most polluted river in North America. As a result we lead the country in childhood asthma and much of our population is encouraged to stay indoors.
I feel for anyone forced to endure such conditions.
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