Do you lack clean air where you live?

@2004cqui (2812)
United States
March 24, 2012 6:07pm CST
When I was in elementary school my father brought my mom, my sister and I to his place of work one day. I knew I never wanted to go back. He was a diesel mechanic for the fuel tankers that loaded up near his company. I looked around and saw nothing but open, desolate land, telephone poles and some kind of factory looking building. There was a huge stack with a flame at the top. A gigantic candle that burned day and night. Dad said it was to burn of the last of the toxic fumes. You could have fooled me! The smog was thick and the stench felt like it was burning out my nose hairs! I've always been the curious type and looked up this area called Pine Bend. This place is nothing but oil refinery! At the time it used nothing but diesel tankers to transport fuel to the international airport and western Wisconsin. Now there is a direct pipe line to the air port and supplies almost all the fuel they need. It also has a direct pipe line to western Wisconsin. The population of this place? 6 people live there. Gee, I wonder why? It is situated on the Mississippi River, therefore named pine bend. I really wonder what the air and water quality is. Do you think Al Gore and the special interest groups care about this place? There's a lot of talk about global warming yet I'm not hearing anything about this disturbing place my father worked near for 20 years. What your air quality? Hopefully better!
2 people like this
7 responses
@jillhill (37354)
• United States
26 Mar 12
I think our is great...but I know I have been to some cities when you approach them you can see the pollution in the air.....two years ago I went with my daughter and granddaughter from Arizona on a trip to Phoenix....you could see for miles ahead of us the pollution hanging over the city....yuck!
@2004cqui (2812)
• United States
26 Mar 12
Don't go near the east side of Arden Hills, the boarder of Pine Bend! My dad took us everywhere in the station wagon but he avoided large cities as much as possible. I've seen everything from Niagara Falls to fishing trips in the far north of Canada, to Vancouver, to San Fransisco to Nebraska and just about everything in between! Oh ya and salmon fishing in the Pacific. All this compliments of my dad.
@agent807 (751)
• United States
25 Mar 12
I live in a heavily industrial city, and once I lived in an area where the pollution was so bad that it was deemed the most toxic zip code in my state. It wasn't hard to see why. Every industrial factory known to man must be concentrated in this one area. It is terrible. What's worse was that all of this industrial stuff was backed right up against old neighborhoods. Neither place is new. Heavy manufacturing and shipping was big in the turn of the century, so people lived close to where they work. The place I stayed at, you can walk out to your car and have this stuff all over your car which resembled sut from a fire, and you think to yourself, 'if this is all over my car, what am I breathing in?' I don't live there anymore, and the gas refinery is making an expansion which means it will buy some people out of their homes. Their goal is to create a buffer zone between the refinery and the houses because without it, a refinery would literrally sit in peoples backyards. Some people don't like it because it would run people out and break up the neighborhood, but the way I see it, no one will buy a house next to an industrial site these days so they can't sell.
@2004cqui (2812)
• United States
25 Mar 12
And the city I'm referring to is on the west bank of the Mississsppi, Our wind usually comes from the north and west, driving the stench and smog a long away from the twin cities. Everyone lives about 20 miles to the west and the south where the population is less dense. My dad drove 140 miles a day, five days a week to go to work. The only impact that area made on us is the way dad smelled when he came home to supper. The "city" takes up 50 square miles, the only stuff it is the oil refinery and the industries to support it. After it built the pipe lines the tanker semi's were even not needed. Less impact on the human perception of polution.
@Ganesh44 (5547)
• India
25 Mar 12
yes I do lack clean air where I live due to heavy traffic rolling around and I have no control over it but the way pollution is increasing all around the situation will be the same in the big cities of world ...... Let us plant more trees and control pollution Hare Krishna Ganesh
@2004cqui (2812)
• United States
25 Mar 12
After witnessing first hand what produces the most pollution I highly doubt that more trees will make up the difference. It's the huge factories, processing plants, oil refineries and coal plants that need to be addressed. But they are not within the vision or smell of the population so we don't say or do anything. If vehicle emissions were our only threat we'd see it and smell it and we'd be fine because we'd be interested in it's impact on us. I'm glad I'm not the only "tree huger"!
@matersfish (6306)
• United States
25 Mar 12
The one glaring issue with "global warming" I see is that there's no honesty involved in the debate about its existence or in how to proceed with attempting to handle the issues which have arose from it. Everything seems to be about money and power. Al Gore, the poster child for warming, is a shrewd businessman whose alarmist nature is wholly capitalistic and not the least bit genuine. While he preaches for the rest of the world to get in line with using alternative measures, he's invested in those measures and he himself emits more carbon into the atmosphere than some entire counties in America. Gore, along with many of his buddies, are perfectly invested in an alternative market, so if and when there is a shift, they all become the new-age oil tycoons. That's all it is. They care about money. Maybe they do still care about the environment, in the sense that I'm sure they don't want the earth to become uninhabitable. But that's as far as it goes. They've found a way to play on people's fears. Something that's not new, mind you, but something that blends well with the times. In this modern age, snake oil needs a better bottle. It's a shame, too, because there is evidence that the environment is changing. But the more corruption that's exposed from within the genre, the clearer it becomes that those who would preach have a good reason for not practicing, and that is that there's no real sense of urgency on a global scale; it's not anything man can stop, and barely something that man contributes to. (I'm deducing this from the inaction of those who urge action. A real problem requires real action, not a motivational businesslike sermon from the pulpit where the only thing that ever changes is the speaker's waistline and wallet size.) But if it can be sold as strictly a man-caused problem, you have guilt, fear and loathing. You have people paying for their penitence and lining the pockets of the Gore type and granting more power to the bureaucrats who would regulate competition. It's a market wherein they're forcing the creation of a market. It's business. It's not a push to save humanity. Speaking in particular of my environment, I can remember when I was kid looking up at the sky. The stars were perfectly clear. You could even see that beautiful glow of Milky Way that perfectly provided back lighting for the cluster of billions of stars out there. As I was typing this, I peaked out the window. I counted 2 stars. I haven't seen that old view in ages. The sky here is always too foggy to see the stars the same way. We're talking about 20 years. In another 20, you might not be able to see the moon.
@2004cqui (2812)
• United States
25 Mar 12
Excellent and truth filled! I usually give a visual, close to home scenario: I remember as a youth we had an intersection you could see from our front yard. It had no stop sign and the families around it, particularly the mothers would petition to put one in. We got to hear the accidents and near misses all the time. Then one day a child was hit getting off a school bus but too far away from it as a pedestrian for the bus lights to stop for him. Then and only then a stop sign was put up, our monument to the child we had to see every day. It seams this is human nature. Until it bugs us we aren't concerned until it's too late! I also agree with you about Al Gore, obviously. He isn't the only one using the media for personal success. The Kennedy's did it, So did Lincoln. No one is motivated by their own moral compass, they are motivated by money and power.
@shibham (16977)
• India
25 Mar 12
Hi dear... I am far long away from a site that you have mentioned but pollution is a universal issue now a days. You know, here it is almost six months over without rain and the result is air pollution. Dust dust and dust. When we go out, we must need to have a bath, not to think the time or coldness. We must have to wash the clothes that we use in a day, cant wear for the second time once we take off. urgggg.... have a nice time.
@2004cqui (2812)
• United States
25 Mar 12
You are describing Pine Bend. My dad came in the door smelling of fuel. Mom washed his clothes daily.
@Archaiwy (599)
• China
25 Mar 12
In fact, there are only a few places with clean air.Everywhere ther are vehicles, large factories and many other things which are polluting air all the time. As a whole the air is much worse than that in the past. Man should take care of his own living world.if man can't protect the earth, he will destroy himself one day,i think.
@2004cqui (2812)
• United States
25 Mar 12
If pollution doesn't kill man first, it will kill the earth. Feeling lucky to outlive the effects of pollution will be a scary sight. The earth protects itself so the road to recovery as the earth itself makes drastic changes to remove the pollution!
@SomeCowgirl (32191)
• United States
24 Mar 12
I think that I would cry. When I had to move back here I could tell that the air quality was different. Not by too much but when your used to living out in the country and come back to a more suburban area you can tell. I don't think I could live in the area your father worked, and I can't imagine the health of the six people living around that area is very good.
@2004cqui (2812)
• United States
25 Mar 12
If air quality doesn't kill us, it will kill the planet, taking us with it! I think Pine Bend is a clear example that we will not stop pollution! We only think we are!