Air Pollution

There has been attention recently to horrible air pollution in some cities in China. Some people have taken an air of superiority, in some cases probably to use this to minimize our own problem. But we have had our own problems in the past, within my lifetime, that were alleviated because of stronger laws against pollution.

Some want to take away all laws protecting us from powerful businesses. We need a balance. Some laws are needed for civilized life.

http://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/history/topics/epa/15c.html

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The air program was founded in 1955 in reaction to a wide range of alarming problems: the suffocating blanket of smog covering greater Los Angeles; the 1948 atmospheric inversion that temporarily raised the death rate in Donora, Pa., by 400 percent; a London "fog" in 1952 that killed 4,000 people over a four-day period. Equally severe water pollution problems--untreated sewage and industrial waste, dying rivers and lakes--led to the founding of the predecessor of the FWQA in 1948.

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