To Shirley [Crosson] and her team — because there is a supposed spike in asthma on Vancouver Island, does not mean [the cause] is limited to just wood smoke.
By omission you seem to point to just one thing. You missed the following: pollen, dust, emissions from cars, emissions from diesel trucks, emissions from mills (can’t see it but it’s there), oil burning furnaces, decomposing materials, fertilizers, road grit (deteriorating asphalt and tire rubber) etc. Yes even a large amount of cow farts.
Not to forget, the cesspool effluent that is sprayed onto some of the crops, herbicides, pesticides, from imported food stuffs, dusts from other areas that fall from the sky after wind storms pick them up and re-deposit them, volcanic ash in the atmosphere — come on, there are so many factors to do with asthma.
How about this, callous though it may be, premature births that result in lung problems, people taking drugs and drinking while they are with child, smokers’ children when they are at home — can we go on? Yes we can. (Man made products in particular.)
Also, to lump every area into this Cowichan Valley inversion that sometimes causes problems, is a little too general. There are a number of places that don’t suffer from this that are supposedly in the Valley, for example Mill Bay, Shawnigan, the Malahat to name a few. Certainly it is because if one can see it, and smell it, it has to be the problem, it seems.
In order to get away from all of the above I’m thinking you would have to move to a rainforest, in a nature reserve far away from civilization.
Don Richardson
Shawnigan Lake
