Life is filled with silly outrages. For me one of these outrages concerns the albuterol inhaler that I use before running or when I am suffering from the onset of acute asthma symptoms. Because of the propellant used the product is no longer being manufactured and eventually the supply will run out. Fortunately, Pharmaceutical companies being so profit driven have already introduced an alternative. I was really never worried about that.
The outrage comes in the form of the reason behind the ban on the propellant. I have a hard time connecting all of the asthmatics in the world contributing irreversibly to global warming through the use of their inhalers when I see all the single car drivers on the street even though the state of Colorado called for a reduction in date time driving due to poor air quality. Last week the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment issued a RED notification for the Denver-Boulder area for at least 3 days.
On Thursday the air quality was so bad you could smell it. I don’t know if you have ever been in a city where the air was so bad you could smell it….Los Angeles comes to mind…but it is nasty. Even with all of my doors and windows closed the smell permeated my apartment. At one point I was concerned that something was burning. It actually smelled as if our building was on fire. Apparently I was not the only tenant concerned and the fire department showed up. The fire man told us gathering outside in the smog that the building was fine we were just smelling the wonderful Colorado air.
Thanks to a shift in the winds that carried the smoke from the San Diego wild fires, our own Colorado wild fires and a friendly high pressure ridge keeping everything trapped we were in for a few days of fun. Fortunately the air quality has improved some.
However, the improvement in the air quality was due to natural forces and not the teeming masses of Denver who didn’t seem to reduce their daytime driving or heed the fact that residential burning was banned. I am sorry if you live in city limits there is no reason you should need a wood stove or even a pellet stove as your primary source of heat. I don’t care how “environmentally friendly” pellet stoves are…and I used to manage a stove and hearth shop in Gig Harbor, WA…they should be banned in urban areas.
During this time I found that I was using my soon to be banned rescue inhaler several times. Normally I don’t use it except prior to working out. How come tobacco companies can still manufacture cigarettes? Yet pharmaceutical companies can’t use the propellant for my inhaler?
I get it! I really do. Frankly I am glad they are being forced to change the CFC based propellant in my inhaler. I already have enough health problems without pumping CFC’s into my blood stream via my lungs. But I still can’t help but appreciate the irony of the situation.
Granted all the cigarette smokers in the world, were they to light up simultaneously, do not pose a great risk to global warming when compared to the industrial plants, automobiles, deforestation, and the pollution of our oceans and the devastation of the South American rain forests. Oh yeah….let’s add soil erosion and the dwindling sub tundra region in the artic. But still…
While we are being so brutally honest let’s just admit that smoking is not only a smelly, unattractive habit it is unhealthy as all get out. You can ban smokers from all the restaurants and public places you want but having them stand around puffing away and tossing their butts on the ground wherever they air is not really helping the issue.
Even if you are fortunate to win the genetic lottery and are not susceptible to cancer you may end up with a face that looks like a worn out baseball mitt. It might be because I am still so raw at losing my dad to an interstitial lung disease but smoking really pisses me off.
I would give anything to have a perfectly healthy set of lungs. I would love to go for a run or work out with out needing to have a rescue inhaler nearby. I think of all the people I love who smoke and just shake my head. I am talking especially to my brother Kyle who at 25 has that raspy smokers sound when he coughs or talks. Hey you big dumb ass you come from a family where diseases of the lungs are part of our genetic heritage.
My dad never smoked a day in his life. I have never smoked a day in my life. I dated a smoker once and when the doctor came back with my chest x ray and accused me of being a smoker I broke up with her. Actually she broke up with me as she chose her habit over my health. I was also glad to not be sleeping with her any more. She stunk. She was also one of those girls who thought jamming her tongue down your throat was sexy. Instead I felt like I was licking out the inside of an ash tray.
There is no such thing as smoking in moderation. The smoker may escape health problems but the people around you may not. The dangers of second hand smoke is no lie, it’s a fact. It is not, as some would allege, a liberal conspiracy to put an end to tobacco companies.
Those of you who have cleverly switched to organic cigarettes need to rethink your position. You may not be getting all the arsenic and formaldehyde that your average Marlboro Man gets but you are getting nicotine a very deadly poison. Nicotine is an alkaloid from the nightshade family of plants and while in small doses it won’t kill you, you certainly are not doing yourself any favors.
You may as well drink Soda Pop and eat at McDonalds once in awhile because despite all your efforts to eat right the poison you are introducing into your system is sort of canceling out the other fine efforts you are making.
Some people like to compare drinking with smoking. But these are two different issues. Yes, alcohol presents a very serious health problem in our country. But I can drink in moderation; a smoker cannot smoke in moderation. In fact, unless I am an alcoholic, my drinking doesn’t necessarily have to affect anyone negatively if I use common sense.
A person drinking even one glass of wine, admittedly, does present a more significant risk behind the wheel of a car then someone who just smokes as smoking doesn’t affect perception the same way that alcohol does…though nicotine is a mind altering substance.
The difference between smoking and drinking is primarily this, studies have shown that moderate use of red wine and some beers can have a minor health benefit to the drinker but there are no studies that claim the same for a moderate use of tobacco products.
The other difference is that my moderate use of wine or beer does not affect the health of those who occupy the same space with me but do not choose to drink. Smoking affects everyone around them. This is not intended to be an endorsement for alcohol as it brings its own slate of health and social problems too. This is just a simple argument to suggest the real danger of smoking.
If you are a smoker it is hard to take your concerns for the environment of the quality of our food supply seriously. It reminds me of my Saudi friend who is potently anti-Semitic while forgetting that Arabs are Semites too. It is a sort of self-eliminating behavior.
Maybe if I wasn’t asthmatic and have spent a good portion of my life in our increasingly toxic environment struggling to breathe I wouldn’t be so rabid when it comes to smoking. Yesterday I was on my afternoon run when I passed a group of fat teenagers smoking away at the side of the road. They would not move out of my way and I had to push through them. Besides being typical adolescent shits their smoke caused my bronchial tubes to spasm and if it weren’t for my rescue inhaler it would have been a huge problem.
Recent years has seen Asthma and relating lung disorders as being the number one cause of school absences among children. This should alarm us. For one thing Asthma isn’t just a lung problem it is also a disorder of the auto immune system and it effects the bodies overall ability to fight infection.
Influenza and pneumonia are the two biggest predators that an asthmatic must be wary of.
These are no longer the only problems that face us either. SARS and the potential mutation of the so called chicken flu are things to be aware of. While I am not one to necessarily jump on the band wagon about the potential of chicken related influenza, influenza epidemics are not necessarily a thing of the past especially given the growing number of people without health care or health insurance coverage.
Then there is a new threat in the form of the Ad14 cold virus that has finally made its way to the United States. Certainly the media likes to hype these things up as pandemonium creates higher ratings and ultimately sells more advertising. But it can’t be dismissed either.
We are living in an insane moment and people just keep meandering about not fully considering their actions. The virus is the only “natural predator” we face besides each other. At some point it would seem that an epidemic could help thin out our herd a little and bring it down to a more manageable size. We have outgrown our territories and are fouling our cages, so to speak, at an alarming rate.
It may not be from a scientific view point from which I am coming but it does seem interesting to contemplate the number of “killer viruses” that have begun to emerge in the last 20-30 years. We now have AIDS, SARS, Ad14 and who knows what else is out there lurking about. Not to mention there are idiots working away in labs manufacturing killer virus strains to be weaponized. Only a species as stupid as ours would think of using disease as a way of deliberately killing other people…if this isn’t a bad b-rate science fiction drama waiting to happen then I don’t know what is.
I suppose this whole rant is getting down to one thing…clean air (and clean water). If you can’t breathe you have nothing or so says the American Lung Association and they are absolutely correct; breathing is that fundamental to life. We can live a short while without food, an even shorter while without water but without air we are doomed.
What does that have to do with AIDS or SARS? Nothing…probably….ok….nothing at all that I know of. I tossed it in for dramatic effect. Just like Big Foot and alien abductions have nothing do with global warming, but they just happen to be fun to talk about.
I realize that the threat of an alien abduction is not real, even though you can purchase insurance coverage to protect in the event you are abducted, but you know what is? Smoking! So stop it. You will feel better and live longer.
The outrage comes in the form of the reason behind the ban on the propellant. I have a hard time connecting all of the asthmatics in the world contributing irreversibly to global warming through the use of their inhalers when I see all the single car drivers on the street even though the state of Colorado called for a reduction in date time driving due to poor air quality. Last week the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment issued a RED notification for the Denver-Boulder area for at least 3 days.
On Thursday the air quality was so bad you could smell it. I don’t know if you have ever been in a city where the air was so bad you could smell it….Los Angeles comes to mind…but it is nasty. Even with all of my doors and windows closed the smell permeated my apartment. At one point I was concerned that something was burning. It actually smelled as if our building was on fire. Apparently I was not the only tenant concerned and the fire department showed up. The fire man told us gathering outside in the smog that the building was fine we were just smelling the wonderful Colorado air.
Thanks to a shift in the winds that carried the smoke from the San Diego wild fires, our own Colorado wild fires and a friendly high pressure ridge keeping everything trapped we were in for a few days of fun. Fortunately the air quality has improved some.
However, the improvement in the air quality was due to natural forces and not the teeming masses of Denver who didn’t seem to reduce their daytime driving or heed the fact that residential burning was banned. I am sorry if you live in city limits there is no reason you should need a wood stove or even a pellet stove as your primary source of heat. I don’t care how “environmentally friendly” pellet stoves are…and I used to manage a stove and hearth shop in Gig Harbor, WA…they should be banned in urban areas.
During this time I found that I was using my soon to be banned rescue inhaler several times. Normally I don’t use it except prior to working out. How come tobacco companies can still manufacture cigarettes? Yet pharmaceutical companies can’t use the propellant for my inhaler?
I get it! I really do. Frankly I am glad they are being forced to change the CFC based propellant in my inhaler. I already have enough health problems without pumping CFC’s into my blood stream via my lungs. But I still can’t help but appreciate the irony of the situation.
Granted all the cigarette smokers in the world, were they to light up simultaneously, do not pose a great risk to global warming when compared to the industrial plants, automobiles, deforestation, and the pollution of our oceans and the devastation of the South American rain forests. Oh yeah….let’s add soil erosion and the dwindling sub tundra region in the artic. But still…
While we are being so brutally honest let’s just admit that smoking is not only a smelly, unattractive habit it is unhealthy as all get out. You can ban smokers from all the restaurants and public places you want but having them stand around puffing away and tossing their butts on the ground wherever they air is not really helping the issue.
Even if you are fortunate to win the genetic lottery and are not susceptible to cancer you may end up with a face that looks like a worn out baseball mitt. It might be because I am still so raw at losing my dad to an interstitial lung disease but smoking really pisses me off.
I would give anything to have a perfectly healthy set of lungs. I would love to go for a run or work out with out needing to have a rescue inhaler nearby. I think of all the people I love who smoke and just shake my head. I am talking especially to my brother Kyle who at 25 has that raspy smokers sound when he coughs or talks. Hey you big dumb ass you come from a family where diseases of the lungs are part of our genetic heritage.
My dad never smoked a day in his life. I have never smoked a day in my life. I dated a smoker once and when the doctor came back with my chest x ray and accused me of being a smoker I broke up with her. Actually she broke up with me as she chose her habit over my health. I was also glad to not be sleeping with her any more. She stunk. She was also one of those girls who thought jamming her tongue down your throat was sexy. Instead I felt like I was licking out the inside of an ash tray.
There is no such thing as smoking in moderation. The smoker may escape health problems but the people around you may not. The dangers of second hand smoke is no lie, it’s a fact. It is not, as some would allege, a liberal conspiracy to put an end to tobacco companies.
Those of you who have cleverly switched to organic cigarettes need to rethink your position. You may not be getting all the arsenic and formaldehyde that your average Marlboro Man gets but you are getting nicotine a very deadly poison. Nicotine is an alkaloid from the nightshade family of plants and while in small doses it won’t kill you, you certainly are not doing yourself any favors.
You may as well drink Soda Pop and eat at McDonalds once in awhile because despite all your efforts to eat right the poison you are introducing into your system is sort of canceling out the other fine efforts you are making.
Some people like to compare drinking with smoking. But these are two different issues. Yes, alcohol presents a very serious health problem in our country. But I can drink in moderation; a smoker cannot smoke in moderation. In fact, unless I am an alcoholic, my drinking doesn’t necessarily have to affect anyone negatively if I use common sense.
A person drinking even one glass of wine, admittedly, does present a more significant risk behind the wheel of a car then someone who just smokes as smoking doesn’t affect perception the same way that alcohol does…though nicotine is a mind altering substance.
The difference between smoking and drinking is primarily this, studies have shown that moderate use of red wine and some beers can have a minor health benefit to the drinker but there are no studies that claim the same for a moderate use of tobacco products.
The other difference is that my moderate use of wine or beer does not affect the health of those who occupy the same space with me but do not choose to drink. Smoking affects everyone around them. This is not intended to be an endorsement for alcohol as it brings its own slate of health and social problems too. This is just a simple argument to suggest the real danger of smoking.
If you are a smoker it is hard to take your concerns for the environment of the quality of our food supply seriously. It reminds me of my Saudi friend who is potently anti-Semitic while forgetting that Arabs are Semites too. It is a sort of self-eliminating behavior.
Maybe if I wasn’t asthmatic and have spent a good portion of my life in our increasingly toxic environment struggling to breathe I wouldn’t be so rabid when it comes to smoking. Yesterday I was on my afternoon run when I passed a group of fat teenagers smoking away at the side of the road. They would not move out of my way and I had to push through them. Besides being typical adolescent shits their smoke caused my bronchial tubes to spasm and if it weren’t for my rescue inhaler it would have been a huge problem.
Recent years has seen Asthma and relating lung disorders as being the number one cause of school absences among children. This should alarm us. For one thing Asthma isn’t just a lung problem it is also a disorder of the auto immune system and it effects the bodies overall ability to fight infection.
Influenza and pneumonia are the two biggest predators that an asthmatic must be wary of.
These are no longer the only problems that face us either. SARS and the potential mutation of the so called chicken flu are things to be aware of. While I am not one to necessarily jump on the band wagon about the potential of chicken related influenza, influenza epidemics are not necessarily a thing of the past especially given the growing number of people without health care or health insurance coverage.
Then there is a new threat in the form of the Ad14 cold virus that has finally made its way to the United States. Certainly the media likes to hype these things up as pandemonium creates higher ratings and ultimately sells more advertising. But it can’t be dismissed either.
We are living in an insane moment and people just keep meandering about not fully considering their actions. The virus is the only “natural predator” we face besides each other. At some point it would seem that an epidemic could help thin out our herd a little and bring it down to a more manageable size. We have outgrown our territories and are fouling our cages, so to speak, at an alarming rate.
It may not be from a scientific view point from which I am coming but it does seem interesting to contemplate the number of “killer viruses” that have begun to emerge in the last 20-30 years. We now have AIDS, SARS, Ad14 and who knows what else is out there lurking about. Not to mention there are idiots working away in labs manufacturing killer virus strains to be weaponized. Only a species as stupid as ours would think of using disease as a way of deliberately killing other people…if this isn’t a bad b-rate science fiction drama waiting to happen then I don’t know what is.
I suppose this whole rant is getting down to one thing…clean air (and clean water). If you can’t breathe you have nothing or so says the American Lung Association and they are absolutely correct; breathing is that fundamental to life. We can live a short while without food, an even shorter while without water but without air we are doomed.
What does that have to do with AIDS or SARS? Nothing…probably….ok….nothing at all that I know of. I tossed it in for dramatic effect. Just like Big Foot and alien abductions have nothing do with global warming, but they just happen to be fun to talk about.
I realize that the threat of an alien abduction is not real, even though you can purchase insurance coverage to protect in the event you are abducted, but you know what is? Smoking! So stop it. You will feel better and live longer.
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