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- #11
digitS'
Garden Master
The Vicam was quick help but I'm now hoping to wean myself off of it. I'm still doing quite a lot of sneezing and that's a discouragement to using this herbal spray less.
Dirty air really doesn't help. Of course, there is winter heating season. I used to drive every winter Sunday afternoon from an area of this valley thru a city of about 200,000 on my way south. My eyes would begin tearing from the smoke as I entered the city. That continued until I headed south on US195, gained some altitude and moved into some fresher air. The winter air here is better now with less wood smoke. That must be not only with the development of standards for wood stoves but the increased use of natural gas heating.
Standards for auto emissions cannot have helped much because as they have come in, the population has steadily increased. Just using a couple of communities as examples: Spokane Valley has grown at a rate of more than 1% a year in the most recent decades. Post Falls was a town of 2,000 when I arrived 50 years ago. It now has over 30,000 people by Census Bureau estimate ... And, this is a narrow valley! At it's narrow point, it's only a 9 mile drive across the valley. With the walls of the Selkirk Mountains on each side, it doesn't seem even that far.
Forest fires cause me to suffer a good deal. Pray that we don't have too much of a fire season in late summer ... A couple of recent years have been really bad. But, even without the wildfires, the air pollution from a population of over 400,000 is pretty bad.
I came across this recently: Geographic and social disparities in exposure to air neurotoxicants at U.S. public schools . I don't even know where the local schools rate on the bad air list. The most populated areas have it bad ... and this really isn't one of them. As an olde guy, I'm telling You, we risk our children's health to our great shame. It is NOT the legacy that we should leave to younger generations.
Steve
Dirty air really doesn't help. Of course, there is winter heating season. I used to drive every winter Sunday afternoon from an area of this valley thru a city of about 200,000 on my way south. My eyes would begin tearing from the smoke as I entered the city. That continued until I headed south on US195, gained some altitude and moved into some fresher air. The winter air here is better now with less wood smoke. That must be not only with the development of standards for wood stoves but the increased use of natural gas heating.
Standards for auto emissions cannot have helped much because as they have come in, the population has steadily increased. Just using a couple of communities as examples: Spokane Valley has grown at a rate of more than 1% a year in the most recent decades. Post Falls was a town of 2,000 when I arrived 50 years ago. It now has over 30,000 people by Census Bureau estimate ... And, this is a narrow valley! At it's narrow point, it's only a 9 mile drive across the valley. With the walls of the Selkirk Mountains on each side, it doesn't seem even that far.
Forest fires cause me to suffer a good deal. Pray that we don't have too much of a fire season in late summer ... A couple of recent years have been really bad. But, even without the wildfires, the air pollution from a population of over 400,000 is pretty bad.
I came across this recently: Geographic and social disparities in exposure to air neurotoxicants at U.S. public schools . I don't even know where the local schools rate on the bad air list. The most populated areas have it bad ... and this really isn't one of them. As an olde guy, I'm telling You, we risk our children's health to our great shame. It is NOT the legacy that we should leave to younger generations.
Steve
