Fresh Alaska Air is Fouled by Wood Smoke
By Steve Casimiro on February 19th, 2013
Air-quality readings in November in Fairbanks were twice as bad as Beijing’s, all because too many residents use backyard wood furnaces. Add regular winter inversions and that smoke gets trapped at ground level, creating a constant fog (flashback: Outdoor Retailer, Salt Lake City, last month). You’d think some sort of regulation would be in order, but this is Sarah Palin’s Alaska, where the only good rule is a dead rule: Every attempt to regulate the offending stoves has been beaten back at the polls — a recent initiative prohibits Fairbanks from regulating any heating appliance using any fuel in any way. Residents have been known to burn car tires, animal carcasses, even feces. Los Angeles is no longer the archetype of polluters: Just this winter, Fairbanks logged 48 days above EPA’s dirty air threshold, while L.A. only had 13 days in all of 2011. Yes, the last frontier, where fighting the Man means lung disease. Via L.A. Times.
Read more stories like this at Adventure Journal.
Tags: alaska