What kid in L.A. is fighting for breath?

12 thoughts on “What kid in L.A. is fighting for breath?”

1. That’s the iron, tadchemy. The agencies and the LA times are saying that we must reduce the standards to help the children. The evidence that they use are problems (or at least irritations) at maximum eposure levels which are already in violation of the standards. Reducing an arbitrary number won’t help anyone.

2. Letters to the Editor, LA Times, 8/15/11:

   Your editorial says, “But tell that to the kids living near places like L.A.’s ports who have to fight for every breath.”

   Oh please. Can you be more hysterically dramatic? What a bunch of malarkey. What bunk. What hogwash.

   Robert Ostrove
   Ventura

3. If one looks at “non-attainment” of National Ambient Air Quality Standards (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US-overall-nonattainment-2007-06.png), the worst areas, along with LA county, are the San Joaquin Valley, the Mojave Desert (almost unpopulated!), Tuscon, and Las Vegas. These areas are all ‘in non-attainment’ of at least 3 pollutants – not just ozone. Just as in the case of climatology, the ‘problem’ isn’t as simple as the regulatory hammer-weilders would have us believe.

4. “But… but… it’s for the children!”
   Same old war cry. Same old BS.

5. I grew up in Pomona in the 50’s with smudge pots blasting every winter. I did not know anyone with asthma. Many of my friends rode their bikes on 8 to 10 mile paper routes and could breath very well. I now live in Lancaster ca. Many young people have asthma here in the desert clean air. Most of the children live on the snack food their food stamps purchase and now at fast food resturants. No one in my family nor my wife’s family has asthma, but we do eat a very healthy diet.

6. scizzorbill,

   I live 15 miles DOWNWIND of LA in South El Monte. Get that bullscat out from under your nose and you will stop smelling it.

7. Anyone living in LA will know this editorial is pure bullscat.

8. sorry remove the “not” after But.

9. In the 50’s in Pomona we used to see clouds of brown air coming over the hills from LA. In the 60″s we called the inland empire the arm pit of So Cal. Today everything is much better yet the asthma i had did not relate to the air. Just to pollens and food. But not its the air they claim that’s causing asthma, they just expand the reasons for asthma but no bodies to show.

10. As a teenager in Berkeley during the 60’s I fought for breath. I always thought it was because of Carla, Marie or Suzie.

11. The Ports of LA and Long Beach have been making great strides in cleaning the air in its territory, and how it has affected the surrounding communities. They have been commended for their electric yard trucks, requirements for docking ships to use dock-side electrical generators, and the requirement of vessels to use low sulphur bunker fuels.

    Since they began this effort, the air quality has been certified as being cleaner. I have no idea where the editorialist derives his complaint. Oh wait, from the cleaner air? Most likely.
    http://www.cleanandgreenvehicles.com/portsoflosangelesandlongbeach.htm
    http://www.cleanandsafeports.org/los-angeleslong-beach/

12. The ports of L.A.?? Really, they could have gone for better. Like the inland valleys. That is where all the nasty air generated each day in the LA basin travels each afternoon. As a kid growing up in the worst air quality in the San Gabriel Valley I often fought for every breath. That is while engaged in football, the other football, track and field, etc. Often during the “smog alerts”. I somehow managed to not only catch my breath but even breath and have successfully been doing so for a couple of decades. I