if at all possible don't give birth to your baby in the city of L.A.

[ensho]

http://counterpunch.com/stclair12262008.html


Born Under a Bad Sky
Cancerous Air


This is what it has come to: the air in LA is so toxic that a child born in the city of angels will inhale more cancer-causing pollutants in the first two weeks of life than the EPA (not known for understating risks) considers safe for a lifetime.

This risk never goes away. It comes with the first breaths a child takes. Being born in urban California now means that life expectancy is reduced, chances of getting cancer are elevated. All this before you’ve inflicted any damage on yourself through smoking, drinking booze, eating fast food, or watching CNN.

-snip-

In Los Angeles the air is so clotted with ten cancer-causing chemicals that residents there face a cancer risk 1,005 times the level considered “safe” by the EPA. And the most vulnerable to those risks are children, especially poor and working-class children.

-snip-

This has to do with the physiology of children. They inhale more air than adults relative to their body weight. Thus, they are exposed to higher concentrations of cancer-causing chemicals.

-snip-

For example, in San Francisco the average infant will exceed the EPA’s lifetime exposure to toxic air pollutants in 19 days. In LA, it takes only twelve days. By the time the average LA-born girl reaches her eighteenth birthday, she will have breathed enough toxic air to place her 344 times over what the EPA considers an acceptable lifetime exposure to these contaminants.

“The potential risk that a child rapidly accumulates in California for simply breathing will not go away when the child is older, even if the air is cleaner when the child reaches adulthood,” the report warns. “Remarkably, if the carcinogens in California air were cleaned up to EPA’s level immediately, a child born in California would still exceed the lifetime acceptable cancer risk by age four and an adult moving to California would exceed it in seven years.”
-snip-
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that infant's 1st breath starting its life is most important!

where you give birth matters.

[Alexander]

1. Don't do it in Phoenix, either. The pollution is almost as bad.

It practically never rains here, so the smog just collects in the valley.

The slight improvement in air quality is offset by a pathetic public education system (among the worst in the country - and it shows), the lack of culture, high rates of crime, meth abuse, car theft and nothing in the way of good jobs. So if your kid doesn't get asthma here, he or she will not get a good education or find any decent work.

[lies and propaganda]

4. lack of culture.. no doubt

I lived in Phoenix for the last 8 years trying to make a living as an artist. hahahhahah. Moved to NorCal and in a year have tripled what I have made in one in the desert. Come on out if you need a break ;0

[slackmaster]

2. Endorsed, and please expand that to the entire state of California

We have too many people here already.

[sandnsea]

3. I always thought smog was the culprit

In many cities the air near the measuring stations is worse than indoor air in a bar. You have to hunt to get the numbers in order to compare them, but they're out there. One of these days they'll discover chaff from various crops is worse than cigarette smoke too.