The West Virginia Miners Died Quickly Of Carbon Monoxide Poisoning, But Many Die Slowly Of Similar Pollution

While the high level of carbon monoxide, the dangerous and deadly gas caused a quick death to the West Virginia miners, it should be noted that Americans living in congested and polluted cities are also dying of carbon monoxide and other pollution poisoning, only more slowly.

The air quality is so bad in American cities that even the Surgeon General now considers asthma to be an epidemic. In China it is even worse yet, where simply breathing, a child ingests the same level of deadly poisons in an average day as if they smoked two entire packs of cigarettes a day. Even in the U.S. , some with health problems cannot even walk outside their homes without getting a burning sensation in their mouth, throat and lungs from the outrageously bad air quality allowed in American cities.

Major forms of dangerous air pollution come from cigarette smoking, which fills gallons and gallons of air with deadly carbon monoxide, nicotine, a highly addictive drug just as addictive as heroin, tar , heavy metals such as nickel, and other deadly poisons. While a young smoker in relatively good health may not feel as much of these symptoms of these poisons, those with health problems can feel that they been poisoned by just one breath of this poison destroyed air quality from cigarettes. Why the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commision does not ban any type of nicotine or tobacco product that produces smoke or gasses that can cause harm to nonusers is a very good question. But any product that can poison nonusers should face some public health restrictions on use.

Automobiles, burning of refuse, old fashioned oil burning furnaces, wood burning stoves and coal fired industry all produce major forms of pollution as well. Industry chemicals can meet with rain and create acid rain.

Major pollution types include the harmful ozone gas that lays near the surface, not to be confused with the protective ozone layer, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, lead, toxic air pollutants, stratospheric ozone depleters and greenhouse gases.

As older automobiles slowly leave the road, hopefully cleaner hybrid or hydrogen powered vehicle will become more common. But some form of economic assistance to help older homes retrofit to cleaner heating sources is also needed. And public bans on public smoking are needed. One cigarette destroys the air quality for about a 100 foot radius in every direction, and may be worse with wind currents which carry the poisons to make persons with asthma or other lung problems very sick. Every year billions of dollars in needless health care costs are costed to nonsmokers who have asthma, often because of secondhand cigarette smoke poisoning or other pollution illness not the fault of the person with asthma.

The West Virginia tragedy highlighted the deadly nature of carbon monoxide poisoning. But the fact is that the average American is suffering some similar health impact because of pollution of city air. The Bible states that a lifetime for humans should be 120 years, but because we live wrong we cut this down by more than a third to often less than 80 years. And smokers shorten their lives by about 12 years less than this 80 years in many cases.

There is always a high cost to low living. We all pay the price for living wrong and allowing an absurd level of poisons to ruin the air we count on to breathe.

When I was a little boy, I used to play outside all day long. Now many children do not play outside very much anymore. Cities are simply too crowded and too polluted. And adults insist on smoking around small children causing them to develop painful ear infections and asthma. We reap what we sow by our disregard for God's good earth. We are very poor stewarts of this gift from God.