Air Pollution

As with any city there is some air pollution.  When I worked in Philadelphia you could look up at the sky and see this brownish or grayish looking cloud just hanging over the city.  Most days, when it is sunny, I do not see any type of smog hanging over the city here.  However, on days when there is overcast I will hear people saying that the pollution is bad that day.  There was a story in the news recently about another city a few hours north of here that has a coal burning plant and the smog was so bad it looked like it was midnight even though it was mid-afternoon.  I have not seen anything that bad myself.  About two weeks ago we had a few days in a row of overcast and a lot of fog.  Everyone was saying it was all air pollution and not fog.  The one evening only a few students showed up and the other teachers were saying it was because of the poor air quality and that the news said for people to stay inside.  

Now, I think I mentioned before that people here smoke everywhere.  We have a rule you are not supposed to smoke in the school after 4pm but no one seems to follow it, which annoys me.  I have heard people say that smoking isn’t bad for you (which funny side note, today there is an article on MSN that is was 50 years ago this week that the surgeon general released his report saying that smoking causes illness and death http://news.msn.com/us/historic-smoking-report-marks-50th-anniversary ) Anyway, a few of us are standing around talking because our students hadn’t showed up and two of the teachers are smoking.  Then when they got ready to leave they wrapped their scarves around their head to cover their nose and mouth.  When I asked them what that was for they told me so they wouldn’t have to breath in the bad air outside.  I said you just got done smoking where you were directly breathing smoke into your lungs and the air in here is now filled with smoke but your afraid of the outside air pollution?  Its worse in here then it is out there, and I started to laugh and laugh.  They didn’t find this bit of irony funny.