Jun 21 2006
The Air’s Getting a Bit Thick in Here
Getting outraged by the news is a normal occurrence around here… Last night, I had a killer headache and went downstairs to read the paper. This article in the Times Argus got my blood boiling, called ‘Air Quality Reached Unhealthy Levels’. Apparently that nasty muggy day we had on Sunday was a bit nastier than I realized.
“Vermont is experiencing its highest levels of highly polluted air in nearly five years… The episode of polluted air was due to a high pressure system that brought in air originally from the Midwest where it was exposed to sulfur dioxide from burning coal. The stagnant hot air allowed possibly dangerous particles to slowly build up over a couple days in all of Vermont and upstate New York. These particles, referred to as pm 2.5 (particles less than 2.5 microns in size) tend to build up under hot conditions.”
Vermont is, undoubtedly, one of the cleanest states in the country, due to our low population, quantity of trees, and lack of major polluting industries. That’s why this burns my britches even more. We’re doing things right here and have to breathe the shitty air brought on from coal-fired plants in the Midwest. And it’s only going to get worse. As global warming increases, scientists from Harvard believe that it will exacerbate pollution in our area, due to the lack of cooling winds that come down from Canada and blow the nasty stuff away.
“Mickley and colleagues found that the frequency of cold fronts bringing cool, clear air out of Canada during summer months declined about 20 percent. These cold fronts, Mickley said, are responsible for breaking up hot, stagnant air that builds up regularly in summer, generating high levels of ground-level ozone pollution…If this model is correct, global warming would cause an increase in difficult days for those affected by ozone pollution, such as people suffering with respiratory illnesses like asthma and those doing physical labor or exercising outdoors,” Mickley says.”
And Vermont’s hilly topography easily creates little pockets of stale air. I don’t know why I’m worried, I’m sure the Bush administration is working on the problem with it’s ‘Clear Skies Initiative’ that it touted a few years back. Oh, wait… this is Bushworld here, so expect the opposite of whatever is said. A quick look at it from the Sierra Club shows that, among other things, by the 15th year of the plan, we’ll have 450,000 more tons of nitrogen oxide, 1 million more tons of sulfur dioxide, and 9.5 more tons of mercury allowed than under the enforcement of the existing Clean Air Act programs. It gets better: it delays the enforcement of soot and smog standards until 2015, creates loopholes for existing power plants, and most importantly, restricts the power of states to call for an end to pollution from upwind sources from other states. SO, if we can put up with this nasty air for about 10 more years, everything should be just fine.
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