Air quality around schools

[pegkerr]

Enter your child's school's name here to see how toxic the surrounding air is.

Ew. Not good. Delia's school is in the 28th percentile (34,948 of 127,809 schools have worse air) and Fiona's school is in the 17th percentile (21,160 of 127,809 schools have worse air.)

Comments

[aome.livejournal.com]

My daughter's school is 14th percentile, which isn't too bad, but the school where I went, in CA? 53rd. Ick.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

No, no, that's pretty bad. The lower the number, the worse the score.

[aome.livejournal.com]

Duh - of course. And yet I find it VERY VERY hard to believe that the air here is that much worse than the Bay Area - where you can SEE the smog, just looking around. So - I confess I'm going to take the answers with a large grain of salt.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

That list is for carcinogens, which are mostly invisible. Smog affects asthma and emphysema quite strongly, but has a relatively small effect on cancer. So it doesn't seem all that implausible to me. Cities tend to concentrate smog, especially cities with a lot of car traffic, in valleys. Carcinogenic toxins are more likely to come from big factories, and from agricultural toxins like pesticides. It's been a long time since companies wanted to build big factories in a crowded city--land and construction cost so much less away from cities. So many cancer risk factors are about being downwind or downstream of pollution sources, more than whether the source is nearby, or whether the pollutant is mixed with something visible like dust or smoke.