Beijing's Smog: Must Our Athletes Suck it Up?

Beijing’s Smog: Must Our Athletes Suck it Up?

Kerry Trueman January 24, 2008 | 10:00 am EST

Beijing’s air is so bad that Olympic athletes are being advised to wear “specially designed masks over their noses and mouths from the minute they step foot in Beijing until they begin competing,” as the New York Times reports today.

The air quality on a typical day in Beijing–one of the world’s most polluted cities””is nearly five times higher than the World Health Organization’s standard for safety. It’s so bad that when the US Boxing Team came to China to compete last month, they had to run “in the hotel hallways instead of on the streets because the air was “disgusting,” according to their team manager.

Chinese officials insist that air quality will not be an issue when the Olympics begin on August 8th. They’re working to curtail emissions from factories and cars over the next seven months in the hopes that they can turn Beijing’s skies from brown to blue. Barring an environmental miracle, though, it’s the athletes who’ll be turning blue, after filling their lungs with all that bad Beijing air.

To find out how you can combat smog, go to cleanaircampaign.com.

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One Response to “Beijing’s Smog: Must Our Athletes Suck it Up?”

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Again, another example of our young people suffering because their parents and grandparents made mistakes or were duped into believing in others who did.

“What mistakes?”, you ask.

- using up all the oil under our feet
- overuse of the internal combustion engine
- nuclear plants instead of solar, wind, or geothermal
- coal plants instead of solar, wind, or geothermal
- pesticides and herbicides
- cold and flu medications for babies and kids
- baby formula
- vaccinations
- toys with lead for kids
- fish farms
- keeping cows, chickens, and pigs in buildings for mass production
- deadly additives
- allowing our governments to be lobbyed by big bad corporations
- slavery
- using the rest of the world to build up one’s equity
- sewage put directly into our oceans (Victoria,BC to name one city)
- Santa, the fat man borrowed from Coke, who teaches our children to want what they don’t need
- thinking the economy was more important than the environment
- government exams
- legalizing then marketing alcohol
- cigarettes (not to be confused with pure tobacco)
- criminalizing hemp and its cousin
- profits from war
- devouring resources, then tossing them after one use.
- putting recycle before reduse and reuse

Gosh, I could go on…

Lora
lora bruncke January 24, 2008 | 12:38 pm EST

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One Response to “Beijing’s Smog: Must Our Athletes Suck it Up?”

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