The Urgent Problems of Air Pollution
These days it doesn’t matter where in the world you live or where you go, you can no longer absolutely escape exposure to the poisons that we humans have mindlessly dumped into our air, water and land. In pristine Minnesota, your water might be dangerously contaminated from upstream paper pulp mills. On beautiful New Guinea beaches, you might have to step around hazardous garbage carried great distances by ocean tides. Toxic waste by-products from oil production are everywhere in Middle East deserts.
What these places all have in common from India to Mexico, from California to London, is air pollution. This is the greatest and most pervasive scourge of modern man. Some areas are far worse than others. My recent travels bring London and Los Angeles to mind. The smoke contamination of the early industrial revolution compared to today’s more deadly toxic chemical revolution is almost out of control. When air pollution toxins can actually be seen, then it’s called smog.
What Is Smog?
Smog is a general term that refers to the various kinds of visible air pollution. The word smog – a combination of the words smoke and fog – was first invented in Glasgow, Scotland in the early 1900s. It described the thick, bad air that plagued and continues to plague their city. This smog killed over 1,000 people in 1909! Smog today is more complex than simply smoke mixed with fog. Many of these toxic pollutants are invisible to the eye.
Pure, clean air is the invisible staff of life. Smog is the invisible staff of death
