Some of you may remember that I said that I heard news of the start of the war on Iraq hours after I let Teresa go.
On Wednesday, March 8, Kat phoned me to relay an additional piece of news that Kwame had learned from Marsha's autopsy. This news came just after I heard the following on the KPFA evening news.
KPFA's environmental justice beat reporter, Brian Edwards Tieckert, was at an EPA held a hearing in San Francisco the same night, at which environmental and community group activists railed that a rule change on particulate pollution, eight years overdue and now court-ordered, would actually relax the standards with regard to mining and agriculture. A speaker from Fresno Metro Ministries called this rule change a crime against the San Joaquin Valley. A Spanish speaking farmworker from Poplar in Tulare County also spoke about emissions from dairy farms ringing her town, but the EPA forgot to secure translators, so only KPFA listening English speakers got to find out what she said. None of the three meetings the EPA held nationally were held in the Central Valley or the Los Angeles area, the two most particulately polluted areas in the nation.
What does this have to do with Marsha? Particulate pollution is a recipe for asthma, which reportedly is striking many in the Central Valley.
It is also, though less often, a recipe for something else.
Lung cancer.
Are you as shocked as I was when I first heard this? Marsha was just about to turn 30, and being Mormon had never smoked in her life.
If you want to turn this shock to a useful cause, then follow the path I give you here.
The EPA has posted details and testimony about this rule change on particulate pollution, and are taking public comment. Most of the testimony so far has been very technical, but I feel like giving these officials a more human side to this story, and I hope you do too.
At http://www.regulations.gov, search on keyword OAR-2001-0017 for National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter. There you can see the proposed rules and testimony already on public record, and add your own comments.
On Wednesday, March 8, Kat phoned me to relay an additional piece of news that Kwame had learned from Marsha's autopsy. This news came just after I heard the following on the KPFA evening news.
KPFA's environmental justice beat reporter, Brian Edwards Tieckert, was at an EPA held a hearing in San Francisco the same night, at which environmental and community group activists railed that a rule change on particulate pollution, eight years overdue and now court-ordered, would actually relax the standards with regard to mining and agriculture. A speaker from Fresno Metro Ministries called this rule change a crime against the San Joaquin Valley. A Spanish speaking farmworker from Poplar in Tulare County also spoke about emissions from dairy farms ringing her town, but the EPA forgot to secure translators, so only KPFA listening English speakers got to find out what she said. None of the three meetings the EPA held nationally were held in the Central Valley or the Los Angeles area, the two most particulately polluted areas in the nation.
What does this have to do with Marsha? Particulate pollution is a recipe for asthma, which reportedly is striking many in the Central Valley.
It is also, though less often, a recipe for something else.
Lung cancer.
Are you as shocked as I was when I first heard this? Marsha was just about to turn 30, and being Mormon had never smoked in her life.
If you want to turn this shock to a useful cause, then follow the path I give you here.
The EPA has posted details and testimony about this rule change on particulate pollution, and are taking public comment. Most of the testimony so far has been very technical, but I feel like giving these officials a more human side to this story, and I hope you do too.
At http://www.regulations.gov, search on keyword OAR-2001-0017 for National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter. There you can see the proposed rules and testimony already on public record, and add your own comments.
