Bumper sticker:
“Our air sucks deeply. So you shouldn’t”
Ok, the sticker needs some work, but so does our air quality.
According to the latest Canadian Medical Association report “roughly 21,000 Canadians, mostly seniors, will die this year from a combination of short- and long-term exposure to air pollution.”
[I recommend you click here to see above photo in context at The Kassandra Project]
A newspaper article re the report also said:
“the annual death toll will rise 83 per cent to 39,000 deaths per year by 2031”
Though the economic losses are staggering ($8 billion this year, accumulating to more than $250 billion by 2031) the estimates are conservative since the study “assumed air pollution will not increase above current levels.”
The study assumed we’d stabilize air pollution, our transportation, construction, production and lifestyle habits? And maybe make a few efforts to live smaller than we do?
I hope analysts are correct.
Because “prolonged exposure to air pollution damages the muscle cells in the arteries of the heart, causing them to harden.”
And our hearts, in many ways, appear to be very hard already.
[Read Part 1 for context]
.
No comments:
Post a Comment