[Big Dave]

Re: Post #45

I've been to all of them, both recently and back in the 70s. The air is much, much cleaner than in the 70s. Is it pristine? Of course not. Can it get better? Of course. At what price? Staggering.

Actually the cheapest and most effective means of achieving cleaner air is to massively embrace nuclear power.

But as for a quantitaive measrement, I use the EPA's own five-year report to Congress. Name the pollutant. All of them are less than 40% of baseline. Particulate levels aredown to natural background levels.

roflwaffle posted:
"...roughly 1 out of every 2,000 people living near the port of LA will get lung cancer due to diesel emissions."

Dave says:
Really? How do you know that? Are you sure it wasn't decades of cigarettes or are cigarettes off the hook these days? Railroad ready track crews - which are exposed to high amounts of diesel smoke (30-70 engines (3000+HP)running nearby all day long) every minute of their working careers get lung cancer at exactly the same rate as the general populace. Even if you could prove this, it would have made more economic sense to pay the people enough to move away from the port. BTW, I've never heard such claims made about the ports of Corpus Christi, New Orleans, or Newport News.