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Brian McCarry, speaking April 12
at The Spec auditorium, says car emissions have improved but
we're driving more cars longer distances. (Photo credit Gary
Yokoyama, The Hamilton Spectator)
The following
article is reprinted courtesy of the Hamilton Spectator, McMaster
University’s partner in the Science in the City Lecture
Series.
Apr. 11, 12:43 EDT
Choices
and air pollution
McMaster's chemistry chair says our lifestyle is mainly
responsible for smog
Wade Hemsworth
The Hamilton Spectator
The truth is that there is no simple solution for cleaning
the air we breathe and no single action or body can bring it
back.
But Brian McCarry, an authority on air pollution and chair
of McMaster University's chemistry department, remains optimistic
that a co-ordinated and concentrated effort by everyone can
do quite a bit to take the harmful chemicals, gases and particles
out of the air around us.
"Air quality is with us. It's not going to go away,"
he said in an interview. "It's impacting folks and there
are things you can do to make differences, but it's going to
be everybody pulling together. It's not going to be one thing
that does everything."
Government legislation and policies can take us part of the
way and industrial and commercial practices can generate improvements.
But individual choices from when to drive, how far to turn up
the heat, what we buy and consume and even how we vote will
take us the rest of the way, he said.
"My message is this: that it's our lifestyle that's driving
the poor air quality, primarily. It's what we do and what we
choose to do. It's the cars we buy, the decisions we make about
how to build our cities."
As a graduate student at Stanford University in California,
McCarry, now 58, often visited Los Angeles before pollution
controls became standard equipment on cars. The legendary smog
-- most of it caused by cars and trucks -- was so thick it was
possible to see the stoplight on the next block, but not the
one on the block after that.
He remembers hearing about a visiting scholar from Japan who
rode his bike to work in Pasadena every day for six months,
right under Mount Baldy. It's a peak of 10,000 feet, but the
visitor hadn't realized there was a mountain there at all until
the smog finally cleared enough for him to see it.
Starting in the late 1960s, legislation controlling automotive
emissions forced the industry to make massive changes to the
way it built cars. While few would call the air in Los Angeles
perfect today, all would agree that it has improved dramatically.
And the transformation gives hope to McCarry, who will speak
tomorrow as part of the Science in the City lecture series at
The Hamilton Spectator's auditorium on Frid Street.
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The professor is chair of Clean Air Hamilton, a volunteer
body composed of elected officials, industrialists,
academics and environment advocates. He said some might
be surprised to know they are all "singing the
same song," as they work to reduce air pollution
in and from Hamilton.
"We're all concerned about air quality. We've
all come to the same conclusions. We've all seen the
same data. We've all seen the same trends and we've
come to pretty much the same conclusions. We've realized
there's no silver bullet. There's no one thing. People
are always looking for the one thing that will work."
Despite persistent perceptions to the contrary, the
air in Hamilton is not markedly different from that
in similar cities across the continent, McCarry said.
Still, that is not necessarily good news. Weather patterns
send us air from the industrial Ohio Valley in the U.S.
We add our own industrial, residential and vehicular
emissions to it before sending it along to the countryside,
creating poor air quality in Algonquin Park, Parry Sound
and other picturesque areas where one might expect to
find more pristine air.
Industrial air pollution, he said, has generally flattened,
while the pollution created by people in their everyday
lives continues to climb.
While better technology has led to cleaner automotive
emissions, we have cancelled its effects by driving
more cars more often and over longer distances, said
McCarry, who holds the Stephen A. Jarislowsky chair
in Environment and Health at McMaster, where he has
taught for 28 years.
A few years ago, McCarry and other researchers proved
that toxic compounds in the air, in addition to posing
a considerable hazard to human health, also accumulate
on the hard surfaces that make up cities. The toxic
film that forms on man-made urban surfaces such as asphalt,
metal, glass and concrete, builds up until rain washes
it into sewers and creeks, forming a poisonous broth
that spreads the harmful effects farther still.
It's a phenomenon McCarry and the researchers confirmed
simply by washing windows and analyzing the water they
collected. "We know that all the contaminants you
can name and there's a very, very long list of them
-- PCBs, organo-chlorines, polycyclic aromatics -- they're
all there in the film and the rain washes it off."
McCarry is a plain-speaking scientist who uses words
like "goo" to make it easier to understand
complicated concepts.
"It's going to be, I think, a very understandable
lecture," he said. "When I've put things together
for city hall and have talked down there and shown them
data, the councillors down there can understand me.
If they can, I think most folk can," he said with
a chuckle.
The free lecture is open to the public and starts at
7 p.m. Seats can be reserved by e-mail at sciencecity@mcmaster.ca
or by voice mail at 905-525-9140 extension 24934
whemsworth@thespec.com
905-526-3254
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