CLEAN AIR
Feds work to clean gasoline, emissions
Where you live can have a tremendous impact on your health. Approximately 40 percent of the urban population across the country lives in close proximity to a major roadway, like I-285. As co-founder of Mothers & Others for Clean Air, a program of the American Lung Association in Georgia, I’ve known that this near-constant exposure to passing vehicle emissions threatens human health, especially in children, older adults and people with diabetes and lung and heart disease. This traffic pollution burden will get lighter soon, thanks to new air quality safeguards the EPA just adopted that will clean up gasoline and reduce tailpipe emissions. Cleaner gasoline alone cuts traffic pollution as much as if we took 33 million cars off the road, and will prevent 19,000 asthma attacks and spare 2,000 lives every year. The president and EPA deserve our praise for taking this necessary action to safeguard public health that will benefit generations to come.
LAURA TURNER SEYDEL, ATLANTA
UKRAINE
Before criticizing, try looking in the mirror
The administration’s claims of aggression and violation of sovereignty directed at Russia over the Ukraine incursion are pure arrogance and undiluted hypocrisy. We ourselves have invaded, bombed, threatened and interfered in countries across the globe since the Cold War ended. We have made a concerted effort, too, to alienate from Russia those ex-Soviet states surrounding it including Ukraine — which had been part of Russia for almost 300 years — and to bring them into an anti-Russian NATO, an organization whose purpose long ago expired and which needs to be decently interred. Why can’t we get past this blind spot we have over Russia? The Cold War is over and communism, thank God, is dead and buried. We supported the rabble, including the Nazis, in the streets of Kiev, and we are now reaping what we sowed. So shut up with the sour grapes.
DAVID ROSS, STOCKBRIDGE
POVERTY
Legislature stacking deck against women
In Georgia, if you’re a poor woman or fall into a certain financial threshold, you won’t be medically covered for any health issues because Georgia isn’t expanding Medicaid. And if by chance you can afford insurance, House Bill 707 ensures you won’t be able to access it. And if you can’t afford insurance, chances are you can’t afford contraceptives to avoid unwanted pregnancies, which Senate Bill 98 will ensure you carry to term, regardless if said pregnancy was caused by rape or incest. And those of means sit on their comfortable couches and are aghast at parents who abuse children they cannot afford and did not want. What a travesty: You deny women the means to prevent pregnancy and the means to terminate it.
SUSAN STEWART, FAYETTEVILLE
