It's a beautiful day?

Looking out my window at Bloor and Yonge, I can see all the way to the water. Surely, you say to yourself, you can see to the water all the time from there. Have you tried lately? The smog has become disgustingly bad in this city over the last two years. In fact, some of you may (or may not) have know we had smog alerts IN THE WINTER this year! It boggles my mind, trying to grapple with the conflicting notions that A) this is Canada. We are a fairly clean country - big, spread out, sparse. And B) this is Toronto. We are 4 million-plus packed too close together. We are wasteful, ignorant and too busy to see what we are doing to ourselves. Here's a little blurb from one of the papers to remind us how well we're doing to fix this problem.


Issue: Study Shows Correlation Between Smog and Death Rates

A study conducted by Toronto Public Health has indicated that air pollution is causing the deaths of 822 people per year in that city.
The study was conducted based on statistical analyses, not autopsies, and as a result there are no specific cases of air-related deaths included.
Death rates were compared with pollution and extremes of heat and cold in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Windsor, indicating that increased pollution has in fact led to more heat related deaths.
Dr. David McKeown, Toronto’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, said, "This has to be something the minister of health addresses." He also indicated that the lack of specific cases means that motivating governments to act will be more difficult.