[speaker001:] okay uh could you tell me what you think contributes most to uh air pollution
[speaker002:] well it's hard to say I mean while it's certainly the case that things like automobiles and factories uh pollute a lot um if you look at how much pollution is say kicked up by an active volcano uh it's certainly less than clear that anything man can do in this sort of scale of things has much effect at all what do you think
[speaker001:] um well you talked about uh volcanos I'm not sure how many active volcanos there are now and and what the amount of material that they do uh put into the atmosphere I think probably the greatest cause is uh vehicles
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] especially around cities um uh do you live right in the city itself
[speaker002:] uh no I'm more out in the suburbs but I certainly work near a city
[speaker001:] uh okay so can can you notice well it's it's I live in a rural area
[speaker002:] how about you um-hum
[speaker001:] uh it's mainly farms and uh no heavy industry uh Attleboro itself I live in Rhode Island
[speaker002:] um-hum oh I see
[speaker001:] and it's in the north I live up in the uh northeast corner and Attleboro sits in just over the line
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] where TI's plant is but there isn't a lot of heavy industry there's the freeways and we get an occasional well it depends which way the wind's blowing from Boston because we're only like about forty miles south of Boston so we'll pick up that
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] and uh I've noticed over the past say maybe five or six years uh we live about twenty miles away from the state airport and I notice the fly patterns now of the jets are they getting bigger they're swinging wider so that now they're coming over the over the our homes
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] and it seems like uh um we're catching all their residue I'm not sure if it's kerosene or what that's dropping but other than that you know we don't have the unless we're catching it from the midwest the emissions yeah from the power plants
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] um
[speaker002:] don't you mean like from the coal
[speaker001:] yeah yeah we generate one of our our biggest electrical plants in Rhode Island uses coal to uh generate electricity um
[speaker002:] hm
[speaker001:] there doesn't seem to be much emission from them but I'm not sure about the rest of the country
[speaker002:] yeah I've noticed locally a major problem is Kodak um it's interesting because in order to uh keep with the EPA standards which which tend to be visible uh what's coming out of your smokestack they do all their emissions at night uh so people get up
[speaker001:] is that right
[speaker002:] yeah people get up in the morning in that neighborhood and they've got this black ash on their cars which you know seems to be
[speaker001:] yeah yeah yeah yeah surprise surprise
[speaker002:] yeah I mean I really think if the EPA had anything on the ball they'd go in there with a few phosphorous grenades light up the sky photograph the emissions at that point and uh
[speaker001:] yeah them there must be uh um some of the some of the uh
[speaker002:] you know
[speaker001:] uh larger plants up around up around one twenty eight um we've got reports that uh during the night too like they blow off their their stacks from uh the
[speaker002:] um-hum right
[speaker001:] the boilerhouse for powerhouses and they do that at night too because employees been complaining that the cars have been pitted and you know spots all over them
[speaker002:] um-hum right yeah yeah
[speaker001:] so you're right they could do something about about that I guess
[speaker002:] yeah that seems a little ridiculous
[speaker001:] how are your uh your lakes and uh
[speaker002:] oh they've been getting cleaner
[speaker001:] they have
[speaker002:] sure but um yeah I'm not sure how much the water pollution is is directly related to the air pollution other than acid rain yeah
[speaker001:] acid rain yeah that's that's what I was uh
[speaker002:] I mean the stuff I've read recently in Technology Review basically indicates that acid rain may be a little bit um overstated that a lot of the die off they've seen in forests may not really be due to acid rain at all um yeah I'm not an expert
[speaker001:] yeah no didn't they just have an article oh on uh they were dumping lime up upstate New York somewhere
[speaker002:] hm
[speaker001:] um over over huge areas and and they thought that was more beneficial because you know and it some of it does soak in and some of it runs off right away into the into the streams and rivers and some of the fish were supposedly making a comeback
[speaker002:] I haven't read that oh yeah um-hum
[speaker001:] I can't remember where I I read that recently somewhere and I can't remember where but I thought it was up there so that's interesting because New Hampshire
[speaker002:] you know it's interesting um-hum
[speaker001:] and parts of Vermont um they showed pictures of of extensive tree damage that they attributed to acid rain um
[speaker002:] hm
[speaker001:] do you kind of think it's something else then
[speaker002:] well that's what the environmentalists were claiming in this article so that
[speaker001:] oh they didn't say they didn't say what though they just said they thought it was
[speaker002:] they didn't say what they just said they thought acid rain's contribution may be less than was previously suspected um but it may be other natural things at work um
[speaker001:] hm natural disease
[speaker002:] yeah so it's it's less than clear like I said I don't remember the article that well
[speaker001:] yeah yeah
[speaker002:] but um I don't know I mean what do you think we can uh I guess as individuals or as a group do about uh air pollution
[speaker001:] uh we can demand uh more efficient automobiles for one thing I still think that's that's uh one of our major causes of pollutants
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] uh how we go about that it's uh uh it's a little bit difficult
[speaker002:] so you think it's just up to individuals to ask automakers for uh less polluting vehicles
[speaker001:] yeah you need you need I think you need a a uh vehicle something like uh uh Ralph Nader uh Nader's Raiders or uh where uh or uh uh AARP
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] which has a lot of members uh if you can get those types of groups
[speaker002:] um-hum do you really think new vehicles though is a big problem I mean I remember reading an article that said like it's the older polluters the the twelve and the fifteen year old cars you know contribute like ninety percent of the automobile pollution and the new cars it's hardly it's hardly anything
[speaker001:] yeah they're better but how about all the trucks and buses that are out there uh when when was the last time you saw a truck that didn't belch smoke or uh or
[speaker002:] yeah but doesn't that just mean they're out of tune
[speaker001:] uh I'm not really sure you think that that the uh the trucking industry uh industry is that uh incompetent that they wouldn't you know fuel is is one of their biggest costs
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] so you would
[speaker002:] but diesel engines
[speaker001:] yeah diesel engines
[speaker002:] it you know it's it I mean they do generate a lot of soot but that at least you know that kind of particulate comes out of the air pretty quickly
[speaker001:] yeah yeah we could also uh push for legislation for uh rapid transit systems uh this country seems to be a little behind on that
[speaker002:] yeah on the other hand most people don't use rapid transit because it's so inconvenient
[speaker001:] hm yeah but only because we got used to uh single person single car driving a lot of people don't even like to carpool
[speaker002:] um-hum um-hum
[speaker001:] but we could do that that'll help
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] pollution air pollution the uh United States and Canada are I guess is is uh it going into uh some types of agreements to limit uh what's being given out by power plants
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] I guess Canada's quite concerned that we're sending a lot of our stuff up there
[speaker002:] yeah sure
[speaker001:] so that's helping
[speaker002:] well what do you think about like a device a meter on right on a tailpipe and you paid a tax based on how much you polluted
[speaker001:] now that's an idea don't say that too loud though because uh every city and town will have a meter on your tailpipe generate generate revenue
[speaker002:] well it just means that if you don't pollute right or you pollute very little you don't have to pay any tax or you just buy one of these things and it it um I mean you could you could probably devise them so that it slowly closed off your tail pipe and uh the less you pollute the longer the device lasts and if you pollute a lot then it closed off your tailpipe and you couldn't start your car anymore
[speaker001:] that's a that's an interesting concept is that your idea
[speaker002:] yeah but uh you know it's uh I guess the difficulty would be to somebody could obviously just take it right off the tailpipe again so you'd probably have to build it right into the muffler or something
[speaker001:] well I was gonna to say right you could put it in you could you could it could be installed like a catalytic converter I mean I guess you could take those off too but
[speaker002:] right you could take catalytic but mufflers would be a little more obvious if you took that off
[speaker001:] yeah if you can take a muffler off and only replace well not unless it was built into every muffler
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] and that's
[speaker002:] but if you were just talking about something which was more or less universal that uh buses and any kind of vehicle had to pay a pollution tax um this would penalize the heavy polluters and not penalize the light polluters
[speaker001:] that's a that's quite a concept you should uh pursue that I think or patent it you know
[speaker002:] yeah patent it that's a good idea
[speaker001:] if you could come up with a device that's the thing
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] but it shouldn't be too hard to do something like that but that's a that's a thought no you're right and that will solve uh a lot of problems I don't know if you uh
[speaker002:] um-hum um-hum
[speaker001:] if you approached the automobile industry if they would be too keen on installing something like that
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] uh but you know a proposal to uh uh I guess the proper authorities well you might uh generate some
[speaker002:] um-hum yeah the automobile regulatory agencies or something
[speaker001:] yeah you might generate some interest in it but that's a that's a good idea other than that I'm not sure what what individuals can do other than like I said get involved through a group or an organization
[speaker002:] um-hum