Citizen Air Pollution

I spent two hours and fif­teen min­utes yes­ter­day lis­ten­ing to Den­ny Lar­son talk about air pol­lu­tion and how cit­i­zens can take action when the gov­ern­ment won’t. I was­n’t expect­ing to spend two hours and fif­teen min­utes there, but the deferred pay­off and Den­ny Lar­son­’s love for hear­ing him­self talk [and who would­n’t enjoy talk­ing with 4 pho­tog­ra­phers and two reporters present] ensured that we were stuck there for two hours and fif­teen min­utes. My impres­sion might be inac­cu­rate though, because, after two hours and fif­teen min­utes, and no appar­ent end in sight, I left ear­ly.

The entire rea­son I showed up was to learn how to assem­ble home-made air pol­lu­tion mon­i­tors, using five gal­lon buck­ets. Sim­i­lar “buck­et brigades” as they’re called exist else­where and have worked with some suc­cess. Although they aren’t very high-tech, they are rather expen­sive. Den­ny Lar­son men­tioned, two hours into the meet­ing, after I asked him, that each buck­et costs about $125 dol­lars to make, most­ly because of the pro­fes­sion­al grade valves that are used. Ever since I start­ed sub­mit­ting pol­lu­tion logs to OCA, they’ve been call­ing me about once a week ask­ing me to help more. I agreed to do some buck­et mon­i­tor­ing, but I can’t afford to drop $125 dol­lars for a buck­et and pay the lab fees for the pro­cess­ing. Pol­lu­tion logs will have to do.

I did hear, although no proof was offered, that the Ohio EPA and the Cuya­hoga Coun­ty Air peo­ple are get­ting paid for doing noth­ing, that they have no portable equip­ment, and that the mon­i­tor­ing sta­tions are either far away from the pol­lu­tion or not mon­i­tor­ing for the right things at the right time. I already knew that the Ohio EPA does­n’t work before 8 or after 5, so that pol­lut­ing dur­ing off hours is basi­cal­ly giv­en free rein. I also learned that one short-lived acci­dent can pol­lute more than an entire year of nor­mal pro­duc­tion. And even though agen­cies in this area are being paid to mon­i­tor envi­ron­men­tal impact, they aren’t doing their job and folks in Tremont and Slav­ic Vil­lage have to take mat­ters into their own hands. If you’ve got an extra $125 lay­ing around, that is.

The fact that it took two hours and some prompt­ing to get to the actu­al meat of the process is what has me so grouchy this morn­ing. Some­one should have been mon­i­tor­ing the hot air being emit­ted from Den­ny Lar­son. He should have tak­en no more than an hour, includ­ing the assem­bly of the buck­ets.

Link of the day: Make a Paper Box in five min­utes. Not two hours and fif­teen min­utes. If you’re crafty you can use inter­est­ing things print­ed on paper to make indi­vid­u­al­ized box­es to hold the sev­ered body parts of those dear­est to you. Or not.