Air Quality Quotes

My struggles have been around protecting our air quality, protecting people from mercury in fish. I was very involved in the effort to get the FDA to recognize that mercury in fish is a real health issue and the FDA, you know, needed to be on that. But they were very tight with the fishing industry and did not want the public to be aware in the same way that they later didn't want the public to be aware of the problems with Vioxx, and they sat on the studies for many years and allowed 140,000 people to develop heart disease.

We are very encouraged that the results from our monitoring of air quality and drinking water conditions in both New York and near the Pentagon show that the public in these areas is not being exposed to excessive levels of asbestos or other harmful substances. I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C. that their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink.

CO2 is a minor player in the total system, and human CO2 emissions are insignificant compared to total natural greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, lowering human CO2 emissions will have no measurable effect on climate, and continued CO2 emissions will have little or no effect on future temperature....While controlling CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels may have some beneficial effects on air quality, it will have no measurable effect on climate, but great detrimental effects on the economy and our standard of living.

Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]?... I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that... I’ve always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City.

In Washington, the air quality today was described as 'red.'...You know what 'red' is? It's bad for everyone. Not just old people, sick people and babies. When it's just bad for old people, sick people and babies, that's called a Republican budget.

For the record, I am sticking with my claim that the simultaneous degradation of air quality, water quality, water supply, food safety, soil quality, and other environment-related variables is the main challenge to China's continued development.

A large-scale wind, water and solar energy system can reliably supply the world’s needs, significantly benefiting climate, air quality, water quality, ecology and energy security ... [T]he obstacles are primarily political, not technical.

If the entire world decided to become vegan tomorrow, a whole host of the world's problems would disappear overnight. Climate change would decrease by 25 percent, deforestation would cease, rainforests would be preserved, our water- and air-quality would increase, life-expectancy rates would increase, and our rates of cancer would plummet, so certainly, with that one action of becoming vegan you are quite effectively making the world a better place.

I live in L.A. - I love L.A., first off - but I didn't realize how much better the air quality was in Vancouver until I went back to L.A. for a weekend and I literally felt like I was breathing fire.

We do have serious energy needs for the country, we are aware that natural gas is especially in demand because of its air quality benefits: 90 percent of new power plants have been natural gas-powered.

Take air quality in the United States today: It's about 30 percent better than it was 25 years ago, even though there are now more people driving more cars.

Very few people realize the damage even one mercury vapor light can inflict on birds, air quality and human sleep patterns. It a serious problem that is rapidly growing and it will take all of us to take action before we see results.

It's kind of a shock to your skin, changing climates. It's new water, and new air quality.

Today we're dumping 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the environment, and tomorrow we will dump more, and there is no effective worldwide response. Until we start sharply reducing global-warming pollution, I will feel that I have failed.

That we have children coming into this world already polluted, at the same time we don't know what the effects of that pollution will be on their mental and physical development, is both bad policy and immorally wrong.

We already have the statistics for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, desertification. The future is already in place.

Our situation, with global warming and air quality and all of that, has gotten to be catastrophic.

Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value.

The problem is that everywhere the gas drilling industry goes, a trail of water contamination, air pollution, health concerns and betrayal of basic American civic and community values follows.

In the rich world, the environmental situation has improved dramatically. In the United States, the most important environmental indicator, particulate air pollution, has been cut by more than half since 1955, rivers and coastal waters have dramatically improved, and forests are increasing.

As a black person in America, I am twice as likely as a white person to live in an area where air pollution poses the greatest risk to my health. I am five times more likely to live within walking distance of a power plant or chemical facility, which I do.

Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.

Better use of space, improving the insulation, getting more daylight into the buildings, reducing the energy consumption of the air conditioning and heating systems, making sure that the internal air quality is good, that we have increased natural ventilation opportunities in the mid seasons. You know these are some of the things we can do.

There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all.

Air pollution is my biggest concern right now. Maybe because I live in Beijing, and in this city we have such severe challenges due to bad air quality. It has affected our daily lives and health. I do not go outdoors because of it. I desperately hope that we can improve the current situation.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality - what a joke. In my district, we caught them lying to us about the results of air quality studies in the Barnett Shale. They are playing with the health and safety of our communities, and we are going to tell them that is not acceptable.