What's That Awful Smell?

From the "things we already knew" department, we learned in today's Los Angeles Times-a superb newspaper if ever there was one-that after two decades of sometimes outrageously punitive efforts to clean up the air in the basin, the air quality stinks and not only that, it's bad for your health.

It is also reported that if you do not care to expose yourself to further health risks of this nature, one may move to rural Wyoming, Montana or South Dakota.

I'm going to take a big guess here but I'm willing to bet that we here in Iowa are probably OK in that department. The worst anyone can say about our air is sometimes it smells bad when you're near a hog farm or feedlot, but last we heard the smell of shit is not otherwise hazardous to your health.

Lest I be called a xenophobe or a hillbilly, I did live in the basin for nearly twelve years, and I've got my share of smog stories, of choking on the freeway stuck behind an Oldsmobile diesel, of days when the air was so thick with poison the sun seemed to be dying in a pool of its own heart's blood. I could tell you of smog alerts when we got turned back at the plant gate, how long it took before I knew there was a mountain range behind the city, and on and on. You get the picture.

Let those who value their health take notice and govern their affairs accordingly, as we say in the trade. There's plenty of room to spread out here in the rest of the world.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cancer22mar22,0,7938985.story?track=tottext