Reader responds to other reader about leaded fuel

Dear editor,

I would like to respond to last week’s letter to the editor titled “Lead Emissions from Airport is

Hardly a Problem.” I wish that I shared the author’s optimistic view that the FAA is serious

about finding a rapid solution to this problem.

Knowing that past FAA target dates to address this issue have gone unfulfilled gives me little faith that they will address the issue anytime soon. I am not an expert but the calculation that I have been able to make based on the very limited information that is available indicates lead levels that to me are a problem.

There are studies that support the claim that people who live next to airports have higher blood lead

levels than people who do not and as a neighbor to the airport and someone who understands

the health effects of lead I see this as a very legitimate concern.

It is true that the FAA grants plane owners special rights and privileges which have major impacts on the lives of the people around them. I would like to believe that with these special rights and privileges comes a heightened moral and social obligation to insure that those privileges are enacted in a manner that results in the least possible impact on the people that they affect.

Sincerely,

Jeff Dineen

Please recycle for our future

Dear editor,

I am writing in response to your article about Washington state coping with worsening climate change that was published three months ago. I’m a freshman in high school and we are currently learning about climate change.

It is terrifying to witness the destruction of human-caused climate change around the world, especially so close to home. Every day on the news, I see flooding in a new place and another harsh storm. We brush off the idea that our contribution of excessive carbon emissions isn’t harming the planet and it’s on the natural climate cycle. It’s scary to think that global warming will be irreversible and we are inevitably doomed to extinction because of our actions as if we weren’t already just by living.

Warmer climates increase the likelihood of more wild forest fires, which escalates global temperatures even more. From Time magazine, it says that in most poor countries, “higher temperatures are more than 90 percent likely to have resulted in decreased economic output, compared to a world without global warming.”

Glaciers are melting in the poles due to global warming causing the floods in coastal cities. Next thing you know, sea levels will rise and those cities will disappear and hundreds of millions of people would be in jeopardy. Those people will become climate refugees and displaced in their own countries. From the National Public Radio, it states, “According to the CSIS report, up to 70 percent of the five million people living in Dhaka’s slums were displaced from their original home by environmental disasters.” Many people in Bangladesh move because of rising sea levels. Matter of fact, overpopulation is still a global problem, and climate refugees will contribute to that making it worse. Our future generations are in peril with our polluted leftovers, and there is still no global agreement to help the millions of people who are displaced by natural disasters each year.

What’s going to be left for them? Your kids will go to the aquarium to see plastic in each exhibit instead of fascinating fish. Your kids won’t be on vacation at Miami Beach because it’ll be underwater.

What we do now will predict the future. We need to become more eco-friendly and start conserving our planet just like you conserve your phone batteries.

Donate money to legit climate change organizations like you did when Notre Dame was burning. Some people are and have been reducing, reusin, and recycling, but not all. All of us need to recycle. It’s better to have everyone do it imperfectly than having one person do it perfectly. “Save the trees!” they say, “Save the turtles!” “Save the bees!” You can kill two birds with one stone by recycling.

You would be amazed by how much plastic is around the globe harming the environment critically. You’ve seen the videos and pictures of animals with plastic in their stomachs and around their necks. There is a garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean! If that doesn’t scream pollution, I don’t know what does. We need to educate younger generations about the cause and effects of pollution and climate change. Their future is in our hands. We were only given on planet and we’re taking it for granted. Climate change is real. Save the planet. Recycle.

Sincerely,

Josie Lucien

Renton