Letters to the Editor
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"We may be next."
Next?? As far as global pollutants go there is no such thing as 'remote'. We all live on a relatively tiny little sphere, and in a way this article illustrates why rejecting world accords like Kyoto is such a colossally stupid idea.
My point is that although the U.S. has worked to clean up emissions from its own coal power plants, rivers in the Pacific Northwest now have toxic levels of mercury direct from coal-burning plants in China. The pollution from Asian coal plants is becoming an environmental catastrophe. China and India have hundreds of new plants coming on line within the next ten years (in addition to all their coal-burning factories) so this situation is likely to become much, much worse. And while countries like Mexico have been phasing out the use of chlordane and DDT (a silver lining of NAFTA) those pesticides are still very much in use in other parts of the globe. You probably don't know this but there's actually a fair amount of DDT in the air you're breathing as a result of its widespread use in Asia.
Kudos to Salon. Good article.