Pollution

The Grim Reaper, dressed in the dark robe of death, walks around the chalk- outlined bodies of 75 protesters sprawled across the sidewalk in front of the Sun Co. building at 18th and Market streets yesterday. Pretending to be corpses, the demonstrators held signs to their chests in protest of any changes to ease laws enacted to reduce air pollution

How foolish of me that to think the news media would report the news as unbiased. I have canceled my subscription to Time magazine due to their anti-Catholic reporting. I no longer read the New York Times because of the biased articles. Now it will be impossible to read the Daily News knowing that they have taken a position on a political candidate. The day will come when abuse of this type will come under closer scrutiny, but until then I guess I'll read whatever comes to print that's not trying to pollute my thoughts and the way I vote.

When the sun comes up on Tulpehocken Street, the well-worn buckets are already waiting on the curb. Cans and bottles. Bundled newspapers. Weekly offerings from a neighborhood of recyclers in a city where most of the trash still goes to waste. "I'm into it now," says Joan Fuller, a longtime resident of the West Oak Lane neighborhood that was one of the first to be required by the city to separate its trash. "You get in the habit of getting up and going to work every day, so get in the habit of recycling every day," she said.

Don't ask Christine Fisher for an endorsement of the alleged pollution-killing wonders of MTBE, the winter-time gasoline additive used in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The drinking-water well at her home in Blue Bell, Montgomery County, was poisoned by the stuff. Don't ask Ross D'Bono, executive director of the Pennsylvania Gasoline Retail Association & Allied Trades in Northeast Philadelphia. Many of the 600 service station dealer-members of his organization reported getting sick from the smell of the stuff and took similar complaints from customers at self-serve islands.

The team holding an environmental microscope to South and Southwest Philadelphia thought it had pulled off a coup when it scrounged up six more air-pollution measuring devices in a tight budget year. That was before community activists began clamoring for more monitors. At a contentious meeting yesterday with representatives of the Environmental Protection Agency, activists each told why their neighborhood needed a monitor most. "We're all fighting each other for the most contaminated neighborhood - the most pollution," said Gloria Inverso, whose Italian Market area likely will get a monitor because of its numerous auto body shops.

Several significant facts were overlooked in the April 6 article "Illnesses caused by 'sick buildings,' " by Sally Squires of the Washington Post. Symptoms that disappear upon leaving the workplace would not likely be caused by bacteria or viruses, as emphasized in the article. What was not mentioned was the role played by air pollution of another kind - the buildup of chemicals in the indoor environment. Levels of carbon monoxide and formaldehyde, for example, may be present at higher levels indoors than what would be found outdoors.

Environmental disasters, such as the million-gallon oil spill near Pittsburgh, can have devastating effects on the air, water and soil. In extreme cases, such as Bhopal, India, thousands of people can be killed or injured. Usually, insurance is available to cover the damage caused by these sudden and accidental occurrences. There is, however, another crisis threatening the environment that most people are unaware of: Insurance for gradual pollution damage has become virtually nonexistent.

Cathy DeStefano and Bonnie Mercadante spent yesterday morning painting the town blue. DeStefano and Mercadante, members of the local Beach Babies Mothers Club, joined a dozen fellow volunteers painting blue fish on storm drains along center city streets. Working under cloudy and sometimes drizzling skies, they put the first touches on a campaign designed to help people realize that what goes down the storm drain winds up in the ocean - and pollutes the water. Pollution - including lawn fertilizers, dog feces, motor oil, detergent, and litter - enters the ocean and bay after washing into the storm drains, particularly after a heavy rainfall.

People in South and Southwest Philadelphia have long worried about the impact of pollution on their lives, with good reason: Their neighborhoods are dotted with trash transfer stations, sewage plants, refineries, businesses that emit toxic releases and even a Superfund site. After years of demanding an environmental study, they finally got one. But as Daily News staff writer Ramona Smith reported yesterday, the results are both frightening and scientifically inconclusive. Conducted by Johns Hopkins University the study found that people living in a 26-square-mile area face an elevated risk of developing cancer, respiratory ailments and other health problems.

By 1995, Pennsylvania motorists will face the toughest auto emission standards in the nation, and businesses that pollute will face stiff fees and fines, under a program announced by the Casey administration yesterday. The program would also impose tougher standards on gasoline pumps and on gas itself. The measures are part of Casey's plan to implement the new federal Clean Air Act in Pennsylvania. If the state fails to meet the act's standards, the federal government could withhold up to $600 million for highways or prohibit federal funds for economic development.

BEIJING - Whitney Foard Small loved China and her job as a regional director of communications for a top automaker. But after air pollution led to several stays in hospital and finally a written warning from her doctor telling her she needed to leave, Small packed up and left for Thailand. In doing so, the Ford Motor Co. executive became another expatriate to leave China because of the country's notoriously bad air. Other top executives whose careers would be boosted by a stint in the world's second-largest economy and most populous consumer market are put off when considering the move.

Starting next month, soil contaminated by asbestos and other pollutants is to be excavated and hauled away from a 112-acre section of Valley Forge National Historical Park that has been closed for the last 15 years. The restoration of the site is to be completed by the summer of 2014, but a date for a public opening is uncertain, Donna Davies, manager of the project for Valley Forge Park, said in Friday. Since the autumn of 2012, work has included surveying, archaeological clearance, and soil sampling.

Directives issued by New Jersey's water quality advisory board could be polluted if a bad bill pending in the Legislature passes. Assemblyman John Burzichelli (D., Gloucester) not only wants the New Jersey Drinking Water Quality Institute to use chemical industry-funded research. He wants it to ignore the possibility that the data might be biased. Burzichelli's proposal would also put more industry members on the board, which makes critical decisions about the level of pollutants it will allow in the state's drinking water.

SOCHI, Russia - The frenzy of construction for the Winter Games enveloping this city has local people feeling as if the Greek gods of old were flinging one Olympian thunderbolt after another at them as they helplessly endure. President Vladimir V. Putin wants to turn Sochi, a threadbare resort on the Black Sea, into a polished Russian jewel, an up-to-the-minute, year-round, snow-and-sun resort drawing tourists long after next year's Olympics have moved on. Construction roars along 24 hours a day, leaving some residents dazed in this city of 345,000.

IT'S A SMOGGY SUMMER DAY. The air feels thick. Most people know their lungs might suffer on such days. But increasingly, medical researchers are seeing harmful effects from air pollution on the heart, as well. "Inhaling a heart attack" is how one publication put it. Air pollution has both short- and long-term effects that can injure the heart and blood vessels, causing or exacerbating strokes, congestive heart failure, clogged arteries and other problems, research has shown.

Pennsylvania regulators on Thursday proposed new air emission standards on natural gas compressor stations, the machinery that moves gas from well sites to transmission lines that environmentalists have targeted as a major pollution source associated with Marcellus Shale development. The Department of Environmental Protection says the new standards impose limits that are 75 to 90 percent stricter than current standards for the largest compressor stations. DEP will accept comments on the proposed changes until March 19. More information is available on the agency's website: bit.ly/WikzXZ.

NEW YORK - A wayward dolphin that meandered into a polluted urban canal, riveting onlookers as it splashed around in the filthy water and shook black gunk from its snout, died Friday evening, marine experts said. The deep-freeze weather hadn't seemed to faze the dolphin as it swam in the Gowanus Canal, which runs 1.5 miles through a narrow industrial zone near some of Brooklyn's wealthiest neighborhoods. Marine experts had hoped that high tide, beginning around 7:10 p.m., would help the dolphin leave the canal safely.

NASA today released satellite images documenting the off-the-charts pollution that has blanketed Beijing with thick smog. The abysmal air quality in the Chinese capital has led the government to order factories to reduce emissions and issue warnings to residents to stay inside. The pictures from NASA's Terra satellite, taken January 14, show the choking haze enveloping most of northeast China. The wave of pollution peaked Saturday. Expected to last through Tuesday, it was the severest smog since the government began releasing figures on PM2.5 particles, among the worst pollutants, early last year in response to a public outcry.

IT WAS JAN. 18, 2011 - just a day before Gov. Corbett took the oath of office - when, without warning, trucks started rolling one after another into a once-abandoned industrial site in the Susquehanna River town of Sunbury, Pa. At the end of that day, stunned and angry neighbors counted 27 large dump trucks on their small residential street, filled with the debris from gas-drilling rigs in the Marcellus Shale. Some of the trucks were leaking liquids, said the neighbors, including Cora Campbell, who recalled that "it smelled like a combination of diesel fuel and dirt.

The searchlights over the Benjamin Franklin Parkway have gone dark. The three-week Open Air show by Montreal artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is packing up. But the issue of light pollution that simmered throughout is still with us. It is of concern not only to astronomers, but to others who feel the bejeweled dark sky is an important part of living on Earth and being human. The lofty realm has inspired us to write poetry, compose music, ponder the existence of God, and fall in love.