Letter to the Editor: Those ultra fine particles and our health
Thanks Phil, that was an excellent LTTE. Great stats, solid science. The one problem is that historically, the way for the elite to hold power, is to divide and conquer. The lady in Graeagle will probably respond in another direction & on & on. The real problem with human’s excess use of carbon-based products is what they cause: pollution. So, Phil, you actually are my age &, I assume, travel down into the valley. After the Dome Store, you look out into the valley & what do you see? Hopefully it’s polluted air.
I taught Anatomy & Physiology at FRC for 30 years. Our respiratory tract is amazing at filtering particles from the air. Unfortunately, anything below 6 microns (amazingly a millionth of a meter) is not filtered in the upper respiratory tract. Worse, anything below 2.5 microns passes across the respiratory membrane in the alveoli & into the bloodstream (600 million alveoli in both lungs where CO2 comes out of the capillaries & O2 goes into the bloodstream) where they wreck havoc in multiple areas of the body, especially the circulatory system. This is the reason why more smokers die from cardiovascular disease than respiratory illness.
So, our dependence on fossil fuels is producing tons of products less than 2.5 microns. Actually, researchers are looking more now at ultrafine particles which are less than 0.1 microns. This is where humans need to wake up & smell the pollution. A person living in that cesspool of air in the valley or the Bay Area is breathing those ultra small particles 24/7. They are entering their bloodstreams & initiating damage. The problem: it takes 20/30/40 years for the damage to manifest. It’s not like falling off of a roof & breaking your hand!
So, hopefully you & the lady in Graeagle could stop going back & forth & realize that we are all on the same side: the side that needs to move to sustainable energy sources that don’t produce those ultra fine particles & damage our bodies.
Jim Cross
Quincy