Aware Of Air

Dear Prime Minister Stephen Harper,           

Do you ever wonder what our world would be like without air pollution?  Well, I do and I think it would be a safer, cleaner, and simply a better place for all of us to live.  Although it can be fixed, the world will never be the same again.  I think air pollution is a very important issue and a serious problem for our environment.  It is a fast growing problem and we need to fix it right away or our future will be very sad!

You might think that air pollution is not that big of a deal or that it is not that bad right now, but if you thought that, you would be very wrong.  You might also think that air pollution isn’t affecting you, but wrong again!  Air pollution affects our eyes, nose, throat, and lungs.  It can also get into your airways and into your blood stream.  Once air pollution enters the blood stream, it can affect any number of physiological systems.  Air pollution doesn’t only harm people, but it is also bad for other living things that we share our planet with like our animal friends, plants, and basically the entire ecosystem.  Air pollution makes our planet very sick.

The human health problems due to poor air quality are very serious, but mostly affect the body's respiratory and cardiovascular systems.  Individual reactions to air pollutants depend on the type of pollution a person is exposed to, how much pollution, and how good or bad the person's health is.  People who exercise outdoors, for example, on hot and smoggy days have a better chance of being affected by pollution.  The health effects caused by air pollution may range from difficulty breathing, wheezing, coughing and aggravation of existing respiratory and cardiac conditions.  These effects can result in more medication use, more doctor or emergency room visits, more hospital admissions and even an early death!  These health problems will not only affect you, but it can affect your children, grandchildren, and even THEIR children and so on.  The problem can affect your family and mine for generations to come.

Air pollution is slowly improving, but it is still not good and we have a long way to go.  If it doesn’t improve, it will continue to negatively affect human health, the environment, and the economy more than it is now.  There are many ways we can help to reduce air pollution.  We can help by chaning the types of transportation we currently use.  Car exhaust is very bad for the environment, so one way you can get to work is you can ride a bike. It is not only helping the environment, but it is good exercise and good for your health.  If your work is very far, you can car pool.  Also, there are many other types of transportation you can use like walking or taking public transit.   

We can also help in our homes.  You can change your old light bulbs and replace them with energy efficient light bulbs.  They save energy (and money) which means energy companies don’t have to burn more fossil fuels that will go up into the atmosphere.   If energy companies burn less fossil fuels, there will be less need for smoke towers so you can get rid of some of them.  We can also help by changing our habits when we use our air conditioner and furnace.  When we are home we can set our air conditioner or furnace setting to 21˚C during the day.  Then, when no one's home or we are asleep, we can set the temperature so we use even less energy.

There are many other ways to improve the air quality and there are many other reasons why air pollution is bad, but I think that is enough to get started with!  If we do these simple things, we can have a very big impact on air pollution and an even bigger impact on our future!

Sincerely,

Ally A-P