Toxic beauty & labored breathing due to smog
Usually, I'm a fast hiker capable of quickly walking up a steep incline, no problem, no labored breathing. It rained three days ago, so I didn't consider smog as I went later than usual (5:00 p.m) with a friend on my hike. But ozone and fine diesel particulates, known for their dark color, filled the sky and my lungs, making breathing difficult, so much so I didn't hike. I couldn't hike. 
It made me very sad. Not that I couldn't hike but that I couldn't hike because of smog, hurting my lungs and chest, and, in fact, making it impossible to go higher. Rest assured this is the final kick I need to go over the edge to... finally, yes... I can... live in clean air.
The air is horrible, inexcusably bad, despite Air Now (EPA web site) listed a forecast of good air quality for ozone and good air quality for particulate matter. My photos alone tell a different truth.
Air Now rarely tells the whole truth, I wonder if it ever does.
Monday and Tuesday this week, I'd started to feel my lungs labored at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
The L.A. Convention Center is located between two major freeways, an area considered a toxic hotspot-- high incidences of cancer/cardiovascular disease--according to health impact air pollution specialists.
The Convention Center has layers of parking.
Lots of trucks and SUVs lumbered about, spewing emissions as I found parking in the building's South Hall garage. I walked quickly through the garage because the air was thick with poison and I found a large steel door that led into the lobby of the Convention Center.
The large steel door remained open all day.
No ventilation.
It was as if the Los Angeles Convention Center was set up to suck toxic auto emission fumes into otherwise elegant halls, which, in this case, housed government, NGO, and activist clean air leaders, discussing how to clean up the crap in the air.
How about starting in our own backyard like get ventilation outside the Convention Center, not inside. And let's work toward international standard agreements so we can breathe everywhere.
A lot of talk about clean fuels. So make mandates already, create gas stations that dispense clean fuels, get electric cars on the road, and then invite me back to the convention center and see if I can breathe.
Before I left my hike of a few steps, I took shots of toxic beauty. Sunset in the Santa Monica Mountains.
That's me flying away unless I drive. To be determined.
Donna, I think you would have been better off on the FFCA harbor excursion ... they tell me the NOx and PM rise up over the harbor then settle over the nearby residential areas as they are blown inland from the port area ... sorry your hike was cut short. You gotta get out of that place ...
Posted by: Doug | February 27, 2008 at 09:34 PM