Irina Echarry
I know it’s worse in some other places, but that doesn’t diminish the seriousness of the matter.
Whoever gets up early in the morning will see a huge cloud hanging over the city. From some places, such as above the giant Christ statue on the hill overlooking the city, the line that defines that cloud is clearly distinguishable. It’s smog, though what’s curious is that there’s little industry in Havana.
Consequently, those of us who don’t smoke are exposed to their nicotine, tar, carbon monoxide, lead and cadmium (among other substances) that are released into the air with the burning of each cigarette.
Added to all of this is the gray smoke that comes from spraying to kill off the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, gases from the fumigation that is difficult to avoid given the dengue epidemic in the country.
At the corner where I live in the outlying Alamar neighborhood, sunrise is anything but peaceful. At each bus stop is the usual black smoke and the familiar sounds of the horns. Plus, not long ago a fleet of roofed-bed trucks were added to the vehicles serving the P3 bus route.
This means an increased number of motors constantly being started up and turned off while expelling their smoke. But where do these gases go?
If to all of this we add the methane generated from landfills and the carbon dioxide gases produced from burning garbage, a common practice in the city, all we can do is nostalgically think back to those the days when the air was pure.
The solution is not new: we need to use waterpower, the wind or sun which industrialization had us discarding. We also need to quit using nicotine altogether. In addition to bicycles, we should also go back to getting around on horse, donkey and goat-drawn wagons. I can even imagine riding around in a high stagecoach-like wagon, dodging potholes in Havana. It would a slower trip, but one without so much smog.
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