In the relentless afternoon sun and heat, the sidewalk chalk almost melts into the pavement as a succinct message is scratched onto the asphalt entrance at the Esso station at Main and Leland: "STOP SMOG."
For 40 minutes people hand out leaflets about smog and Esso's attempts to discredit the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty on global warming which the U.S. has refused to join.
Greenpeace is calling for a boycott of ESSO (ExxonMobil in the U.S.)
The majority of people are happy to receive the information, along with a free bike-route map for the Hamilton region.
One customer suggests going after Ontario Power Generation (formerly Ontario Hydro) for their coal burning power plants in Nanticoke, which he describes as "a disgrace."
He is told about a peaceful protest last year at the Corporate Offices of OPG in Toronto where several people were arrested and criminally charged for demanding that OPG convert from burning coal to cleaner natural gas.(their trial is in Toronto in September)
One woman receives the leaflet on Esso, scans it, and decides to go elsewhere to fill up. A boycott is begun.
No one disputes the fact that humans are seriously messing up the air with hyper-consumption lifestyles.
One driver refused to accept any information. He apparently complained to Esso staff who finally ordered the leafletters off the property, tersely giving them a "one minute" warning and threatening to call the police.
The threat happened to coincide with the need to depart for a soon to begin Parking Meter Party just a few blocks away organized by local transportation activists in Transportation for Liveable Communities (TLC).
TLC arranged the party to welcome a dozen members of the Cycling for Sustainability crew who had just arrived in Hamilton on their way across Canada.
About 30 people gathered to share food, listen to music, play hackey sack, decorate the asphalt's oil and grease stained ugliness with colourful sidewalk chalk, and hear a premierC4S recitation of Dr. Seuss's environmental tale" The Lorax."
As bicycles displaced cars in the parking spaces, people stopped by to say hello and share food with the C4S cyclists and take a leaflet.
C4S's Kevin Hamilton explained that they are hoping to raise awareness about simple steps people can take to live sustainably on the earth. They are cycling their message from coast to coast from Victoria B.C. to St John Newfoundland. On the way they encounter people in various communities putting sustainability into practice in their daily lives.
Yet even in the enjoyable atmosphere of people gathered in community to celebrate the possible future of sustainable living, the poisoned atmosphere of the current state of air quality lent a sense of urgency to the message.
1,900 people in Ontario go to early grave each year due to smog-related respiratory problems according to the Ontario Medical Association, 110 of them in the Hamilton area. Transportation accounts for 27 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada as well as being the single largest source of air pollution in the country, according to stats from Environment Canada.
While the message about air pollution gets into the news, (the day after the parking meter party the Hamilton Spectator ran a story on air quality, reprinted below) positive grassroots actions such as these by C4S and TLC are largely ignored by the corporate-owned media in Hamilton.
Yet it is citizens' actions that are necessary if we are to survive in a tolerable, liveable, breathable world.
The message? Don't wait for someone to do it for you, organize your own street party, a walk to school program, car-share club or car pool. Try the bus, bike, or walk to some of your destinations. Call your city councillor and tell them to make clean alternatives like the HSR bus service more available instead of cutting back - tell them to stop planning on paving the Red Hill Valley or the Mid Pen Highway. Write a letter to the editor in your local paper. Be the change you want to see!
To find out more about Cycling for Sustainability check out their web site at www.cycle.wild.net.au
TLC can be reached at 905.525.9140 ext. 26026, hasc@tao.ca. On the web at www.hwcn.org/link/tlc
For information on simple steps you can take to help stop global warming, go to www.thebet.ca and take the pledge.
For the STOP ESSO! Campaign go to www.greenpeace.ca/stopesso/
Recycle Cycles non-profit volunteer community-based bike repair shop is a local place to go and help fix up donated bikes and sell them cheaply to those who can't afford new bikes. Call Dean at 905.577.7753 for details.
Car Free Day, September 22, 2002 - help TLC organize an event in Hamilton. See the Toronto Car Free Day Website at www.carfreeday.ca
Help set up a Car Coop in Hamilton - see www.peoplescar.org for what Kitchener Ontario has done.
"Slow down, you move too fast, gotta make the moment last, just skipping down the cobblestones, looking for fun and feeling groovy"
Simon and Garfunkle.
A new study has confirmed air pollution is bad for the heart as well as the lungs. In an article published today in the medical magazine Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, researchers say patients with heart disease are more likely to experience ischemia, a reduced supply of oxygen to the heart muscle, after exposure to polluted air.
That's not good news, given the quality of the air over southern Ontario this summer.
July has been particularly choking in Hamilton.
Air quality in the city has been within the range defined as good on only eight of the first 29 days of the month, a Spectator computer analysis shows. And the summer smog season is far from over.
Air quality is expected to be good today and tomorrow, but the above-30-degree heat forecast for most of the week means smog levels are likely to climb. The heart study underlines concerns of health professionals who say people with life-threatening conditions such as lung or heart disease are most at risk.
This is something Marilyn Repchuck, 49, knows only too well.
The Ancaster resident suffers from asthma and bad air can spark a sudden attack. "It's a feeling of wanting to take a big breath of air," she said, "but you can't."
Surviving a bad-air spell means a life of ducking from air-conditioned buildings into air- conditioned cars and back into other air-conditioned buildings. The air outside is just too dangerous to breathe.
"Sometimes, it's really difficult when you can't even go outside and water the flowers," Repchuck said.
Typically, August is the month when the mercury remains high for days on end -- perfect weather for smoggy conditions to develop.
But Hamiltonians have already simmered, sweated and sweltered through more than twice the normal number of plus-30 C days in July.
"It's an above-normal summer as far as July is concerned," said Jack Dennahower of Environment Canada's Ontario Climate Centre. "And we haven't even got into the dog days yet."
Yesterday, Niagara's health department issued an excessive heat alert. If high humidity and temperatures continue, the alert could remain inplace the rest of the week. It's Niagara's third excessive heat warning this summer.
Hamilton hasn't issued an alert as of yet this week, while Halton region doesn't have a heat alert system in place.
As of yesterday, the environment ministry had issuedair quality advisories covering 13 days for Hamilton. The advisories are issued when the air quality index is expected to reach 50, the official cutoff for "poor" air.
That's about on par with this time last year.
By the end of last year's summer smog season, there had been 21 days under air quality advisories, a record since the smog program began in 1993. That could be exceeded this year depending on how much more hot weather we get.
On the worst air days, a stew of health-threatening pollution, including ground-level ozone, nitrogen dioxide and small airborne particles, can make breathing difficult even for the healthy. The pollution comes from both local sources and the United States.
The Ontario Medical Association compared heart and lung deaths with high smog days and estimates 1,900 people in Ontario die as a result of bad air every year, including about 110 in Hamilton. Sixty per cent of those who succumb are seniors.
The summertime pollutant that gets the most attention is ground-level ozone, which forms when substances such as oxides of nitrogen, emitted bycars, trucks and factories, are literally baked by the sun.
Dr. Monir Taha, Hamilton's acting medical officer of health, notes that car windshield wipers and tires in southern Ontario crack prematurely because of ozone.
It can cause lungs to wear out early too.
"Ozone doesn't asphyxiate you, so it's unlikely to kill you," Taha says, "but it could cause ... possibly irreversible damage."
It was fine particles that the heart study published today blamed for cardiac problems.
The study by Finnish researchers says that fine pollution particles squeeze off the oxygen supply to heart patients when they exercise.
"It's really been the last couple of years that data have accumulated showing a relationship between air pollution and heart disease," says Dr. Murray A. Mittleman, director of cardiovascular epidemiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. "But we don't understand the mechanisms by which this happens. This study addresses that issue."
The researchers put 45 patients with heart disease on exercise bicycles and had them pedal for six minutes, sometimes when the outdoor air was clear, sometimes when it was polluted, as the researchers recorded their electrocardiograms and looked for effects on the heart and blood supply.
They found that many of the volunteers were much more likely to experience reduced oxygen to the heart muscle after exposure to polluted air. They also were more likely to have an abnormal ECG pattern, called an ST segment depression, which is linked to ischemia (reduced blood supply).
And the research indicates that these cardiac problems are related to specific air pollutants -- the fine particles that come primarily from factory smokestacks and the ultrafine particles that come from diesel exhausts, among other sources.
The main indicator right now about the potential for that damage is the air quality index.
It measures six key pollutants -- ozone, nitrogen dioxide, suspended particles, sulphur, sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide.
Actual readings taken at more than 30 monitoring stations around the province are converted into an index value. Values between 0 and 31 indicate good air quality, between 32 and 49 moderate, between 50 and 99 poor, and over 100 very poor. The value for the overall index is set by the value of the highest pollutant. Of course, the higher the value, the worse the associated health effects.
The most sensitive individuals, such as Repchuck, can notice effects even in the moderate category.
The worst readings in the Hamilton area are typically recorded in Burlington and on Hamilton Mountain, according to a Hamilton Spectator computerized analysis. Readings tend to be lower in downtown Hamilton, and lower yet in west Hamilton. That's partly because pollutants from cars, trucks and factories below the Niagara Escarpment tend to react chemically with ozone to reduce its concentrations.
The worst reading of this year (79) was recorded at the Hamilton Mountain monitoring station July 17.
Despite its reputation as a polluted, industrial city, parts of Hamilton consistently record better air quality readings than other areas of Ontario.
For example, from June 1 until July 26, the Hamilton downtown station recorded lower late afternoon readings than the station in downtown Toronto on 28 days, compared to 23 days when the reading in downtown Hamilton was higher. On four days, it was the same.
"The air quality overall in Hamilton has improved dramatically in 30 years," said Brian McCarry, chairman of Clean Air Hamilton and professor of chemistry at McMaster University. "Other cities almost everywhere, it has got worse."
McCarry credits local reductions in industrial emissions, and the explosion in the numbers of cars and trucks on the roads in the Toronto area for the change in fortunes.
But it's not just major urban areas that score higher readings than Hamilton. Even relatively smaller places such as Kingston and Peterborough have higher average air quality index readings than Hamilton's lower city, according to the Spectator's analysis.
That fact is one of the reasons why the air quality index is criticized by some as inadequate.
Take Port Stanley, as an example.
Located on Lake Erie, south of London, it has the worst air anywhere in Ontario, according to the index.
Dave Yap, co-ordinator of air quality and meteorology at the Environment Ministry, says huge quantities of ozone and ozone-forming chemicals blow across Lake Erie from states such as Ohio.
Veronica McDougall, the owner of the Erie Breezes bed and breakfast, 40 minutes west of Port Stanley, was surprised to find out about the sorry state of the local atmosphere.
"We always seem to have good air," she said yesterday. And the critics agree, saying because the index is always driven by a single pollutant -- ozone about 90 per cent of the time, according to the Spectator's analysis -- it can both make the air seem worse than it is in Port Stanley, and better than it is in Hamilton.
In Port Stanley, there may not be many other pollutants present. In our area, the emphasis on ozone tends to shroud the presence of other dangerous chemicals which can have equally detrimental impacts on people's health, Taha said.
A national committee of doctors and other experts is working to devise a new type of index that would measure the overall impact on health, and not just which pollutant happened to be most common.
Partly in response to criticism, the Ontario government recently announced it would begin to include a seventh pollutant in the index, so-called pm2.5 particles. These are particles so tiny, they can be absorbed deeply into the lungs.
"That's what you see when it's hazy outside," OMA president Dr. Elliot Halparin said. "In essence, what you see is what you are breathing."
Pm2.5 particles will be part of the index starting sometime in August.
Halparin predicts, as a result, we will begin to see smog days declared in the middle of winter, when other pollutants such as ozone are typically low, but pm2.5 volumes can be high.
But whatever the index says, one thing is clear. We'll all be breathing polluted air for some time to come.
"It's our urban lifestyle, and industrial living that is driving all of this stuff up."