Sunday, October 23, 2011

Arizona's Air Quality Conundrum

!±8± Arizona's Air Quality Conundrum

On the subject of our atmosphere, there has been substantial dialogue and debate over greenhouse gases, global warming, acid rain, and humanity's responsibility in the generation thereof, and, indeed, these issues are rather contentious in the political sphere. Where public discourse has neglected to apply appropriate deliberation and examination is in the general quality of our air and the health effects stemming from poor air quality. In addition, there is not enough public awareness of the effective and actable solutions to air quality problems, nor is there enough individual responsibility to enact those solutions.

Poor air quality has a hefty tally of proven adverse health effects. Air pollutants not only exacerbate the symptoms of asthma and trigger aggravated asthmatic episodes, but they can actually contribute to the outset of chronic asthma. According to chemists at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, air pollutants containing persistent free radicals (PRFs) affect the lungs in similar ways to tobacco smoke and are suspected to contribute to the presence of smoking-related diseases, such as cardiopulmonary disease and lung cancer, in lifetime non-smokers. Cystic fibrosis patients who are exposed to pollutants stemming from industrial and automotive emissions or improper use and maintenance of HVACS experience a drastic decrease in lung function. Smog has been linked to chronic bronchitis, pneumonia, emphysema, and other lower respiratory illnesses. Air pollution is also statistically related with higher rates of fatigue, allergies, heart attack, stroke, DNA damage, and premature birth. According to the American Lung Association's "State of the Air" report, 79% of Maricopa county citizens are at high risk for respiratory complications as a result of poor air quality. Moreover, the World Health Organization has concluded that 41,200 people die per year in the United States from causes "attributable to environmental risk factors." As one might presuppose, poor air quality has the worst effects on the demographics least capable to combat the irritants in our air: the elderly, the young, and the chronically ill.

Because of our concept of public space, the quality of our air may appear to be strictly a matter of public policy, something far beyond an individual's control, something that only corporate planning or government regulation could alter. To an extent air quality is a public concern, because most of the pollutants in our air are created by urban, industrial, commercial, or environmental factors, but it is just as much an individual concern. All of those urban, industrial, and environmental pollutants that plague the atmosphere also enter into homes at alarming rates. Once these pollutants enter into a home, they are typically trapped there by humidity, air pressure flow, HVACs, and building envelope. Then, the chemicals used in daily domestic life compound these outdoor pollutants. The outcome is that the concentration of the pollutants in the average home is actually about two times as dense as the concentration of those same pollutants in the atmosphere. If one considers that the average person spends the bulk of the day indoors, it becomes clear why indoor air quality is rapidly becoming a major issue.

Everyday indoor air pollutants that are considered noxious, toxic, volatile, flammable, carcinogenic, allergenic, antigenic, radioactive, or otherwise hazardous include particulate matter, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), microbial contaminants, Legionella, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, tetrachloroethylene, methane, arsenic, cyanide, smoke, ozone, aerosols, asbestos, radon, and lead.

Indoor air quality is a complicated dilemma without any easy solutions. Poor indoor air quality is often compounded by outdoor air pollution, which creates a paradoxical conundrum where indoor air must be ventilated efficiently for health reasons, but outdoor air is too contaminated to be suitable for indoor intake.

There are, however, several different home improvement measures individuals can enact to reduce the presence and impact of air pollution in their homes. Houseplants are capable of filtering and metabolizing many pollutants, especially VOCs, microbial contaminants, and carbon/oxygen-based gases. Houseplants also help balance oxygen-carbon levels. Many common household products, especially cleaning products, fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, contain ozone, ammonia, chlorine, arsenic, cyanide, and other harmful chemicals that are highly reactive and can compound with outdoor air pollutants. Reducing or eliminating the use of these products is essential to improving air quality. Having your home inspected for the presence of toxic, radioactive, and carcinogenic materials such as lead, radon, and asbestos is an important safeguard. Inspection is especially necessary in older dwellings that were built before awareness and regulation of these materials existed. Smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors are necessary tools for measuring air quality and safeguarding against house fires, carbon monoxide poisoning, and low oxygen levels. Regularly ensuring the functionality of heating devices, such as furnaces, boilers, water heaters, stoves, and ovens, will protect against dangerous levels of flammable, volatile, and toxic chemicals such as methane, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide. Using dehumidifiers to regulate air humidity will reduce the presence of microbial contaminants. HVAC design is also crucial. Pairing an HVAC system with a carbon dioxide sensor allows for need-based ventilation, which can help maintain clean air. Air filters are important for filtering some outdoor air pollutants such as particulate matter before they are trapped indoors. Increasingly, HVAC systems are being designed to remain in a positive air-pressure state, which better controls the influx of outdoor air. Positive air-pressure state HVACs are important in urban areas, where outdoor air contains abnormally high levels of hazardous materials and ventilation is still needed.

Considering Maricopa County has repeatedly violated the 1990 Clean Air by failing to meet air quality standards and has recently received the worst possible air quality rating from the American Lung Association, it would be prudent for residents of the Phoenix metropolitan area to consider enhancing their indoor air quality by updating and enhancing their HVAC system. In Arizona, where the desert climate creates high levels of dust in the air, it is crucial to have a well-working air filtration system to filter particulate matter. Residents of the Phoenix metropolitan area should also consider converting to a positive air-pressure state HVAC system, which will ventilate indoor air only when absolutely necessary and can be programmed to ventilate air at times in the day when outdoor air is least harmful. These precautions, along conscientious, pollution-limiting use of our public air, will help combat some of the air quality problems and the health complications thereof, which we have experienced over the past few decades in the Valley of the Sun.


Arizona's Air Quality Conundrum

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Thursday, October 20, 2011

Our Polluted Planet

!±8± Our Polluted Planet

It has become evident over the last decades as there has been greater release of information and increasing transparency about previous production and licence that allows many avenues of chemical pollution to continue in our atmosphere, in our water, our food, in our earth and in the subtler toxic elements in the social environment of our times. Many of these factors are no longer an error of western civilization but are also being adopted in some of the less materialistic societies to their future detriment, both physical and spiritual.

The analogy that compared humanity as lemmings hastening to the cliff edge would seem appropriate unless two positive motivations result in changes of action. These involve cessation of the production or creation of the chemical toxic pollutants in our human world and lifestyles and a similar cleansing in our minds and consciousness where thought is the prime mover.

There are many constructive and often isolated efforts to correct any one negative factor that becomes public knowledge. This will usually evoke a counter action from those who are focussed upon the material environment and alert to the danger threatening the quality of our natural elements. But like the hydra-headed monster, cut off one evil and another does seem to sprout immediately until the overall task to 'clean up our environment' can seem impossible. Impossible it is, until the cause is dealt with.

So far the industrialized countries have no obvious will to do this. Environmental toxic elements that are harming us continue to do so until the instruments in our governments find the moral backbone to take severe action to redress severe problems. This is apparently difficult to do in our modern system where the minds of our leaders are polluted by tangled persuasions and interests involving the dollar but forgetful of ramifications that may disallow health and therefore happiness of the people. No longer is this the top priority.

Any effort to purify the physical environment once polluted or poisoned is commendable but is far more difficult than preserving purity and quality. Seeking quality without correcting the injection or source of poisoning is an unreasonable project that has no end.

We need reason to prevail if we are to truly advance beyond technological skills to greater satisfaction of our souls and be able to look to true advancement in the coming decades as we anticipate mankind's coming of age in the twenty first century.

Intelligently correcting the present acknowledged wrongs requires action on many fronts. A few of these are obviously top of the list regarding chemicals and would involve.... strict control of all industrial chemicals to minimize usage; continued phasing out of chemicals use in agriculture; total ban on use of chemicals used in preparation and presentation of food for market or for consumers; total ban on chemicals that have a history of mis-use and are proven to be a causative factor in cancer and other diseases.

Industrial pollution is complex in the issues and in the matters of control but begins with a general reconsideration about possible new methods of manufacture or return to simpler principles. All release of toxic gases and fumes into our air remains a known cause of our major diseases.

Other pollutants involve our water quality with toxic material entering our groundwater from various sources including deliberate injection of chemicals into our water such as chlorine, fluoride and others in attempts to neutralize negative bacterial threats and diseases.

The soil of our Earth planet was once perceived as 'our Mother Earth' is now suffering long drawn out illness arising from our disrespect and the many, many habits that continue to offend our relationship with our material home element that sustains our lives. Should we continue to deposit our wastes from homes, hospitals and industries this way?

Then we have noise pollution and visual pollution, both of which received passing acknowledgment before legislation was made impotent by agencies reluctant to exert control of the negative elements involved. So our permissive governments are disallowing us in some measure the enjoyment of peace, quiet and beauty. Without these tonics for the soul there can be little harmonious relationship with the natural world.

But what about other factors such as radon, a radiation that is directly responsible for killing thousands each year with its invisible negative influence - a gas that is difficult to detect by our senses but that is carcinogenic and along with smoking, a cause of much lung cancer.

Traffic fumes join the accumulating toxins in our atmosphere and are increasing each year as millions of new vehicles appear on the roads. They are directly responsible for various symptoms of ill health including cancer.

And recently Propylene Glycol, (PG) a colourless chemical used in a great many food products, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals as a solvent is under scrutiny.

Present warnings about Bisphenol A, (BPA) another controversial chemical ingredient in the manufacture of milk bottles for infants and other general drink containers is a cause for real concern for both infant health and adults. It is shown to leaches into the liquid and is capable of deranging the endocrine system and our hormones.

And we have not touched yet upon Noise Pollution - and the damage done by amplified sound that not only affects our delicate hearing sense but damages our brains; and the radiation problem associated with mobile phones or cell phones suspected as a factor in brain tumours and other nerve problems that are predicted to increase in the community in the years ahead.

We have really polluted our planet in futile attempts to seek 'newer' and ever promising material rewards. This prevailing attitude has led us to an impasse that equally promises us self destruction if we do not cease our addictions - to our own greed for the new and exciting - to chemical drugs both medicinal and 'recreational' - to discordant sounds - to ugliness, to violence - to material wealth.

We must seek answers that will sustain our lives with body and soul intact and these answers were known thousands of years ago as we know them today.

All that we do requires us to be living in harmony within us and with nature if we wish to recreate a society composed of the finest energies and thoughts of human intelligence.


Our Polluted Planet

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