By John Sutter
I sat down last week with Eddie Terrill of the state Department of Environmental Quality to talk about the air here in Oklahoma — and how that compares to some of the trouble the world has seen with air pollution at the Beijing Olympics. By one measure, the air in Beijing is more than 5 1/2 times worse than the air in OKC. As I wrote in a story for The Oklahoman:
Oklahoma City has averaged about 16 micrograms of coarse soot per cubic meter of air so far in 2008, according to federal data. That’s less than the U.S. national average. Beijing averages 89 micrograms of soot per cubic meter in 2004, according to the World Bank.
According to readings taken by the BBC, Beijing’s air hit an abnormal 275 micrograms per cubic meter on Aug. 10, two days after the start of the Olympics.
“Most of (the pollutants) cause asthma-like symptoms: shortness of breath, tightness in the chest, coughing, just general irritation in the breathing passages in the lungs … they’re lung irritants is what they are,” Terrill said.
You can find much more about the air in Oklahoma — including a list of major polluters and a breakdown of air pollution sources — on the paper’s clean air page. The state DEQ says air pollution, particularly from ozone, is a statewide public health issue.
