Decades of Exposure to PM 2.5 Pollution

I stop and read when articles on the long term health implications of PM 2.5 exposure catch my eye. I follow the science, in this casual way, as well as the environmental action (or inaction) taken in response to the deleterious effects of decades of exposure to these tiny lung-damaging industrial particles.

And, I also casually track the discussion among long ago childhood friends on the lived experience we shared of growing up within the dreaded four kilometer range of a coal burning power plant. It ain’t pretty. Some see any criticism of what we were exposed to — living within the four kilometer range of not one but two coal burning power plants– as criticism of the hard work their blue collar parents did at dirty and sometimes dangerous work to achieve their modest financial stability. Others, of course, are terrified of what the data appears to show and what the patterns of disease and cause of death in their own families has shown them.

COVID-19 may write the risk large, which is even harder to face.