In his op-ed “We’ve got enough environmental regulations” (Nov. 28, TribLIVE), Robert Smith states, “The environment has never been cleaner in my lifetime than now.” He compares environmental regulations to scraping the bowl for that last bite of chip dip, stating, “We continue to expend ever more effect to pick those last molecules of contamination to satisfy our environmental appetite for ‘cleaner’.”
We do not have just a few molecules of contamination. In the American Lung Association’s 2020 “State of the Air” report, the Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton, W.Va. metro area tied for the eighth-most-polluted city in the nation for its year-round average levels of fine-particle pollution. Pittsburgh ranks 26th worst in the nation for smog from ground-level ozone. The grade was an F in Allegheny County and a D in Westmoreland County.
We, as citizens, have the right to breathe clean air and drink safe water.
Many of us older citizens remember the ads for cigarettes with physicians smoking to promote the “benefits” of smoking. Smith’s job as an environmental scientist for KU Resources may skew his vision for what is clean air.
As long as the air in Pittsburgh includes multiple cancer-causing compounds — formaldehyde, benzene, coke oven emissions, arsenic compounds, to name a few — and Allegheny County is in the top 1% for cancer risk specifically from large industrial sources, we need to fine-tune and improve our regulations, not abandon them altogether.
Patricia Daly Oliver
North Huntingdon