Are You A Victim of This?

Out of nowhere a headache starts, or your breathing starts to labor.  You can't think of any reason. Then maybe you smell something: a cigarette!  Maybe even outside.   You look around and sure enough, the perpetrator is nearby,  You are a victim of...

Personal Pollution!

That insidious attack on your health because someone has the right to light up where they happen to be.  They have the right to indulge their unhealthy addiction at the expense of your health.  Let's put that in perspective....

Me in my home office when the downstairs neighbors light up!

18% More People Die From 2nd Hand Smoke Than Guns

NO! THIS IS NOT A JUSTIFICATION FOR GUNS. It just demonstrates the insidious problem of second hand smoke!  According to Lung Association statistics and the  CDC 45,725 people die yearly from second hand smoke while 38,551 die from gunshot wounds,   Oddly most of the victims of second hand smoke die of heat failure, not lung cancer.  7,330 deaths vs 33,950 deaths respectively.  Or....

Maybe You're a Perpetrator

Next time you light up, look around.  Are there any people near by.  Even if you are outside, there is a good chance there is.  Are any of them kids? In children, secondhand smoke causes the following:

• Ear infections
• More frequent and severe asthma attacks
• Respiratory symptoms (for example, coughing, sneezing, and shortness of breath)
• Respiratory infections (bronchitis and pneumonia)
• A greater risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)

Just saying.

Maybe It's Happening To You, Too?

AQI Effects Me.  Why Not You Too?

When I first was diagnosed with high blood it was intermittent?  Intermittent?  

WTF?  Weird

Either you have blood pressure (the silent killer) or you don't!  Right?  Not sometimes?   HPB doesn't come and go.  I'd go to a screening at work and it would be high.  I'd go to the doctor and it would be low like it has been all my life.   All my indicators (cholesterol, diet, exercise, sleep, etc..) were good. The doctor and I passed it off as job stress.  It wasn't.

Air Quality is the culprit.

My  intermittent HPB returned this year (18 years later) and being an ex-data analyst, I tracked when it happened.  It happened only when and every time the air quality is bad.  So I verified my suspicions with various medical schools and found these environmental factors raise blood pressure

• Pollution.  Most of which comes from cars. (see chart)
• Ozone. Again the primary source of ground layer ozone is cars
• Second hand smoke:  Other people's cigarettes

As it turns out my high blood pressure 18 years ago, wasn't stress.  I worked in building built over diesel locomotives as they idled their engines to keep them warm for the evening commute.  All the exhaust filtered up through the building.  

How about you?

Have you ever felt these symptoms on an intermittent, but regular bases?  Maybe when you are outside or around smokers?

• Headache
• Fatigue
• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Shortness of breath
• Restlessness
• Blurred vision

Or perhaps you are a culprit?  Which means you can do something about your own or someone else's problem

When Did We First Know?

....of the anthropogenic nature and dangers of "excess carbon in the atmosphere:

1965:

President’s Science Advisory Committee Report on Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide...

...reported to Lyndon Johnson that "By the year 2000 the increase in atmospheric CO2 will be close to 25%. This may be sufficient to produce measurable and perhaps marked changes in climate, and will almost certainly cause significant changes in the temperature and other properties of the stratosphere.”  The report was entitled:

"Restoring the Quality of Our Environment”

"Restoring!"  This term was used 53 years ago; indicating that the level of excessive atmospheric carbon was already past safe levels more than 50 years ago.  It had increased by 7% between 1860 and 1960 (1.3% from 1958 to 1963). The report predicts melting ice caps, rising sea levels, acidification of water sources, and more.  The report links that increase directly to humanity’s behavior:, the Committee reports:

“Carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at the rate of 6 billion tons a year.”

The report recommended: 

“economic incentives to discourage pollution” in which “special taxes would be levied against polluters.”  Think CarboTax Click on the report title above to read the report; or click here.

What Do We Do Now?

It's about "us" not "them"

It always has been,  The largest culprits of excessive are cars and trucks and manufacturing of products we consume.   Besides generating carbon is reducing excess carbon in the atmosphere; a process called "carbon sequestering"  This breaks down to the following action items. 

• Drive less
• Bike
• Public transportation
• Purchase less products in single use packaging that requires manufacturing which in turn generates carbon
• Eat less meat.  The manufacturing of meat generates carbon (Not to mention waste of water which generates more carbon)
• Plant more
• Plants pull carbon out of the air (carbon sequestering) and replace it with fresh oxygenated air
• Leafy plants such as philodendrons and spider plants are good examples.  There are a lot of people on the planet.  If everyone in the U.S. planted the effect would be multiplied by 200 million plus.  It would truly be a "grass roots" solution 

The solution like the problem has always been our responsibility.