Missouri, Coal and Pollution HIstory

On this day, November 28, 1939, in our own St. Louis, Missouri.

This is how soon, how quickly we forget how dirty, how black and foul our air was here in the US, let alone Missouri before government stepped in, by necessity.

Nov. 28 1939: The day 'Black Tuesday' rolled into St. Louis

A bit from the article:

ST. LOUIS • City dwellers woke up on Nov. 28, 1939, in a thick fog of acrid coal smoke. Suburbanites heading to work saw a low dome of darkness covering neighborhoods east of Kingshighway.

In a streetcar downtown at 8 a.m., a commuter told the driver, "Let me off at 13th and Washington - if you can find it." Motorists drove slowly with headlights on. Streetlights, still on, made ghostly glows.

The day became infamous as Black Tuesday, the worst of many smoke-choked days in what was to be St. Louis' smokiest cold-weather season. The city already was known for the nation's filthiest air, worse even than Pittsburgh's.

The reason was the area's reliance on cheap, dirty, high-sulfur "soft" coal dug from the hills and hollows across the Mississippi River in Illinois. St. Louis' first anti-smoke ordinance dated to 1867. But as the city grew in population and industry, the smoke kept getting worse.

In 1936, after years of civic debate, city aldermen required homes and businesses to install mechanical stokers in furnaces or burn "washed" local coal.

Let's learn from the past.

And move forward. Not backward.

Links:  1939 St. Louis smog - Wikipedia

A look back • 1939 'Black Tuesday' - St. Louis Post-Dispatch

1939 St. Louis Smog - Smog and it's Health Effects

November 28, 1939: Black Tuesday In St. Louis

Republicans and Libertarians: You really want to do away with the EPA?

For any Republican or Libertarian or anyone else in America who think it is or would be a great idea to do away with the Environmental Protection Agency--the EPA--or who think there's too much "red tape" from the EPA, I just have to ask if they want us to be like China.

The above situation, announced today and going on now in China, is just one more example of what a nation and an economy is like and would be like if we don't have protections from corporations, especially, so we have and keep cleaner water, air and soil.

A little from the article (link at bottom):

"Young and old residents of the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan were advised to stay indoors on Monday after a thick haze blanketed the city of nine million people, official media said.

Described by residents as opaque with yellowish and greenish tinges, the fug descended suddenly in the morning, prompting people to rush to put on face masks, witnesses told AFP."



"The official Xinhua news agency quoted the environmental protection department of Hubei province saying in a statement: "Children, the elderly and people with heart or respiratory diseases are advised to stay indoors."

Xinhua said straw burning was the cause and denied there had been any industrial accidents in or near Wuhan, after Internet rumours suggested there had been an explosion at a chemical complex northeast of the city."

In this case, the Chinese not only have this huge problem with their air quality, they don't even know what it is or what it's from.

And that's the kind of world we want to live in?

No, no thank you, very much. I'd like to keep an effective EPA, thank you.

It reminds me of the Native American quote: "When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money."

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/chinas-wuhan-city-covered-mysterious-haze-145340073.html

Quote of the day--on nature and what we're doing to it

There are more cars on the roads now, more satellites in the sky. The footpaths up the fells are like stone motorways, there are turbines on the moors and the farmers are being edged out by south-country refugees like me, trying to escape but bringing with us the things we flee from. The new world is online and loving it, the virtual happily edging out the actual. The darkness is shut out and the night grows lighter and nobody is there to see it. --Paul Kingsnorth, "Confessions of a recovering environmentalist", Open Democracy (OpenDemocracy.net) Link to original post: http://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-kingsnorth/confessions-of-recovering-environmentalist