Thursday Thirteen

1. I found this intriguing page about air quality index that shows current air qualities. The nearest place of measurement near me is in Lynchburg. It shows a moderately bad air quality index rated at 69 (not sure what all that means, but I feel vindicated in noticing more pollution around here, since it isn't in the green and great range).

2. This website shows a list of polluters by area. It also shows other types of neighborhood information, like crime, schools, sex offenders, etc. The information appears to be a bit out of date as the list it has of polluters in my county is not correct. Some of the companies they list aren't located here; others have shut down and are no longer in business.

3. These are major causes of pollution in my county: Webster Brick Co Inc., Shaw Connex Inc., Roanoke Cement Co., Gala Industries Inc., Altec Industries Inc.

4. I live right in between Roanoke Cement Co. and Altec Industries. I didn't know Altec was a major polluter. I'm also not that far from the county landfill.

5. Information on pollution is rather scarce on the internet at the moment. For a while you could find more current information on pollution, but some of it dates back to 2012 and the most recent dates I could find doing a quick search stopped at 2017.

6. Don't we have a right to know who's tossing crap into the air and water?

7. I don't much trust the information on any .gov sight right now, but the EPA.gov sight says we have at least three superfund clean-up sites in my county (that was as of 2013). They aren't scheduled for any action, however.

8. I run two air purifiers in my house 24/7. The exterior carbon filter turns gray with stuff within a month of use.

9. Opening the windows is supposed to be the best way to help get clean air in your house. But if the air outside smells worse than the air inside, can that really be the case?

10. I am going to plant more trees this spring. I doubt it helps much, but it sure won't hurt anything.

11. I wonder if one day the Blue Ridge Mountains will be called the Hazy Mountains?

12. Air pollution can come from places other than nearby. We've had smoke from fires in California drift this way before.

13. When the astronauts first went into space, the earth looked like a big blue marble. In 200 years, will it look gray instead?


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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 636th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

The Stench of Deregulation

For the last several days, there has been a ring about the valley in which I live. It is hovering below the mountains, a line of pollution that I can see in every direction I look.

I can smell it, too, when I go outside. It reminds me of my childhood. When I was about 10 years old, I would frequently go outside in the mornings and smell this awful smell.

"I smell Covington," was the line we used. It was the line everyone used, because the paper mill was in Covington and it sent wafts of pollution into the air on an hourly basis. When the wind was right, we all smelled Covington, even though it's about a 45 minute drive away.

And now I smell Covington again, only I don't think it's Covington. I think it's the cement plant. We also have new industries that have sprang up in the last 20 years and who knows what they're throwing up in the air.

(Also, folks are burning wood in their fireplaces now because it's winter, it's cold, and despite all this winning we have in the economy, lots of folks must burn wood to keep warm.)

Many of these local industries in 2017 fell under deregulations put in place by the current administration. Regulations that were meant to stop pollution so that people like me, people with asthma and other breathing problems, might live our lives without choking when we walk out the door. Twenty-one different regulations that stopped air pollution were "rolled back" so that the company owners might make a higher profit.

In 2018, the Environmental Protection Agency decided to reread the rules to suit themselves, and in so doing, they allowed even more pollution to enter our air.

This is supposed to save every household $3,100 over a 5 to 10 year period. The White House has a lovely .pdf that I've linked to that proclaims this deregulation stuff to be the best thing since Nixon said, "I am not a crook." This is a bunch of made-up guess-work (some would call it Fake News). Does anyone really think the corporations are going to take their savings and make the cost of their products less? Do you see the cost of products lessening? I don't. Those savings are going to the pockets of CEOS and shareholders.

All this is doing for me is increasing my doctor bills.

An inhaler costs me $40 under my insurance plan. I'm supposed to use it every 4 hours, two puffs at a time. It only has 200 inhalations. At that rate it won't last a month.

So I skimp on my inhaler and don't use it as prescribed. That means I'm not taking in enough air and I'm tired all the time. The last time I was checked by my asthma doctor, I was only able to use about 70 percent of my lung capacity without an inhaler.

My father asked me a while back how my life has been affected under this presidency when I complained about this administration.

Well, this is one way.

I can't breathe.

Pollution rising from the cement plant, which is just over the ridge. Photo taken on 11-13-2019.

Belching on a Federal Holiday

A little weather "inversion" showing off the smoke from the local industry at 7:35 a.m. this morning.

(It's 7:59 a.m. now and the smoke is still rolling out of the stacks.)

Spoiled View 1-4-2014

Photos taken Saturday, January 4, 2014, at 9:05 a.m. The hill hides the stacks from the local cement plant.

This is Not A Fire

For a couple of days last week, during that time of the government shut-down, I saw plumes of what looked like smoke wafting through the sky from the direction of the cement plant. I took these shots on October 14 around 3:15 p.m.

At first I thought someone was burning brush, but if so it was an odd fire. The white clouds would rise and fall, rise and fall. After my husband and I drove down Catawba Road, we saw that the local industry appeared to be preparing a section of land for blasting. They even had a sign up that said "Caution: Blasting 10-17-2013 1 p.m. - 2 p.m." We thought that was a pretty good indicator of what they might be doing.

My better half surmised that the smoke was actually dust created by machines cutting into rocks. Some kind of rock drilling.

That made sense since the white stuff would magically die away come quitting time. A fire would have smoldered, wouldn't it?

I spent Thursday evening going over my furniture to rid my house of the fine gray film of dust that - along with extra hits on my asthma inhaler - often indicates to me that the local industry has been busy.

It's the reason we run two air purifiers in the house and my light bill is $100 a month higher than it should be.

I waited until Thursday to clean because that was the date on the blasting sign, and I hoped the dust would settle after that.

Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes. Who cares what goes on in between, right?