Pollution

I was driving home the other day from work, a cloudy February day, listening to the radio. An “Air Quality Alert” had been issued for the day. People with breathing problems were supposed to beware, and they advised against any strenuous activities. I looked at the cars next to me as the traffic slowed to a crawl, and saw a good portion of my fellow commuters enjoying an after work cigarette. I wondered if they had heard about the alert. It would probably be a good idea for them to cut back one or two cigarettes today. I would hate to think that any heavy smoker would have trouble enjoying his lifetime habit because of the dirty air around us that day. I considered trying to take shorter breaths, to inhale less of the exhaust fumes as we passed by downtown Minneapolis, and frantically searched under my seat with one free hand for a 3M face mask that I always keep on hand for emergencies such as this.

As I drove I thought back to my childhood. Gone were the days of a heavy gray haze casting an eerie look on the tall buildings, creating awe in the mind of a small child as they passed by looking out the back window of their parents car. Now that we have been told that the haze is bad for us, we can all work ourselves into a frenzy over one more hazard in life.

I recall one of the highlights of my childhood was going with a friend and his dad in the back of his pickup, loaded with bags of trash. The pickup would travel down a small bumpy road, tossing the bags and us around in the back as we giggled and tried to hang on. You could see the black cloud rising over the hill as you approached the awesome spectacle. We would pull up to a huge pit dug in the ground. We started tossing the bags into the man made crater and looked around at the old refrigerators, furniture, and the piles of tires that were burning, creating the huge black cloud. Yes, this was the City Dump in the early 1970’s. No regulations, no rules to speak of, and plenty of carcinogens and refrigerant in the air. As we finished, I remember taking a deep breath to take in the odor of trash and burning rubber. We pulled away, once again riding in the back of the pickup, our journey completed and a childhood memory created.

As I thought of this and slowly navigated the lanes of heavy traffic, I was brought back to reality as I heard something hit my car. I looked just in time to see a chunk of soot skipping across the cars. I reached back and grabbed my spare tank of emergency oxygen and put the mask on. I cranked it up and thought how lucky we are living today.