I remember the dark exhaust spewing out of an old beat-up car on Division Street in Chicago. The two people in the front seat seemingly not knowing the pillows of poison they left behind as they sped away. That image has stuck with me ever since.
I hold my breath a lot these days. When I’m passing someone smoking a cigarette outside a building. When a semi-truck is idling near me. When I’m standing in a windowless parking garage. I think of the dangerous fumes entering my lungs.
Last week, I walked near a construction zone and felt the dust blow into my eyes, nose, and mouth. I felt violated, contaminated, dirty. Both inside and out.
Air pollution is a silent killer. It seeps into every nook and cranny. Like a ghost, particulates are invisible when they enter our lungs. They are all around us when we om and ah in the yoga studio and when we put our little ones to sleep. Air pollution feels inescapable.
Today, San Francisco is suffocating from a devastating wildfire. Though the fire is more than 150 miles away, the Bay is covered in a thick smoke and the air quality in the city has become worse than Beijing’s. I’m confined indoors and when I do venture out, I wear a mask. Every inhale is short, heavy, calculated.
The issue of air pollution gnaws at me. Physically and figuratively. It sits on my shoulder when I work. It wants my attention when I walk outside. It shakes me when I smell exhaust or burnt plastic. It screams in my ear when I read the news. I am overwhelmed by it, this systemic issue that I can’t fix on my own.
I’ve been called crazy and neurotic for voicing my opinions. But, I can’t deny my instincts when they tell me something in the air is wrong. Every human being and creature has the right to clean air, clean food, clean water. The very basic necessities in life. I need to do more…always more.
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”
