At the University of Southern California recently, scientists performed autopsies on 100 youths between the ages of 15 and 25 who had died as a result of violence, accident, and other nonmedical causes. What they discovered was shocking: 80 percent had "notable lung abnormalities," and 27 percent had "severe lesions on their lungs."

Dr. Russell Sherwin, the pathologist who was the principal investigator of the study, said the youths were "running out of lungs." While some of them might have been smokers, Dr. Sherwin observed, "the danger I'm seeing is above and beyond what we've seen with smoking or even respiratory viruses...It's much more severe, much more prevalent. And these are pretty young people." If the youths had lived, Sherwin said, "they would have a very high probability of clinical disease within 15 to 20 years - by the time they got to be 40.¹

If you think this is a problem unique to Los Angeles, it is not. There are ninety-six metropolitan areas in the United States that fail to meet the Environmental Protection Agency's standards. Los Angeles has the worst, in the U.S. But head south to Mexico City, and be sure to take a respirator with you - you'll need it.

And if you think that only industrialized nations with serious traffic congestion have problems, and smoke stack burning are the victims of air pollution - Wrong Again!

The following passage is from "Global Alert the Ozone Pollution Crisis" written by Jack Fishman:

"Biomass burning-the burning of organic material-creates ozone in the same way automobile exhaust does in the more industrialized areas. In both cases, the culprit is hydrocarbons, which are molecules composed of hydrogen and carbon and nitrogen dioxide. In the case of automobile exhaust, nitrogen dioxide and other hydrocarbon pollutants from automobile engines provide the raw material for the low-energy photons. In the case of biomass burning, it is the same gases, but in different relative amounts, that provide the raw material."

As you can see from the brief paragraphs above, ozone is a serious world wide problem. Like so many societal ills, the solution lies first in education, and then action. The Eco Badge® and accompanying lesson books on air pollution is dedicated to that objective. Educating students, and the public at large worldwide in the hope that more of us will become interested in contributing to and developing the solutions.

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