Post #244272 by Swanky on Fri, Jul 21, 2006 8:30 AM

On 2006-07-20 10:02, Digitiki wrote:
The air is in no way "cleaner than its ever been."???? So does that mean that the dinosaurs were the biggest polluters?

Amend that to say, in the industrial age. Last 50 years for sure.

But, that's all with a lot of exceptions. We are doing more than ever to clean emmissions, yet, the AQI is generally going down here in Tennessee. We get the pollutants from the Ohio valley which has the largest and dirtiest power plants in the country. The stuff follows the rivers and mountains and all ends up here. Visibility in the Smoky Mountains is horrible. You can't "See 7 States" from Lookout Mountain much any more. And often, the folks coming to the mountains on vacation leave cleaner air than they find here. Air Quality alerts in the mountains. Go figure. But, acid rain is no longer an issue, as it was in past decades.

So, it's hard to say exactly where we are.