General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThis is what America looked like before the EPA cleaned it up
https://www.popsci.com/america-before-epa-photosRKP5637
(67,108 posts)flotsam
(3,268 posts)dalton99a
(81,485 posts)Generic Other
(28,979 posts)I remember the "liberal" push to clean up the environment. From Ladybird Johnson's campaign to plant wildflowers on the nation's highways, to the push to stop air and water pollution across the country, all culminating in the first Earth Day when Americans vowed to do a better job protecting the environment. And we did make some progress. But not without constant struggle with wealthy polluters who outspent the rest of us.
That hasn't changed. Exxon in Valdez Alaska to Three Mile Island to BP Deepwater Horizon to Flint.
appleannie1943
(1,303 posts)dsc
(52,161 posts)and my mom's parents still lived there until they died (81 and 86) and my aunt lived there until the mid 1990's. I remember visiting and my grandmother and later me hosing off the porch daily as the soot would grow on it if you didn't. I didn't have to hose it toward the mid 80's on.
appleannie1943
(1,303 posts)along the banks of all 3 rivers.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Stuart G
(38,421 posts)karynnj
(59,503 posts)Did more to make it happen.
cyclonefence
(4,483 posts)the Kanawha Valley, Charleston WV. Some days the air was thick with lime green fog, so thick you couldn't see more than a foot or two in front of you. Dupont, Westvaco, Monsanto, Union Carbide--we had them all.
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I have a chronic lung disease (diagnosed at age 18) and have had cancer three times.
Brother Buzz
(36,423 posts)Generic Other
(28,979 posts)dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)Do you know when/who details?
Brother Buzz
(36,423 posts)He's also an accomplished musician on the saw. When Jack Nitzsche was composing the music for One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest he needed a saw and put out a call. Everyone told him the only player in Southern California under the age of eighty was Armstrong. He got the gig.
vimeo.com/125754833
https://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/did-you-see-what-he-sawed/
http://armstrongartandnoveltyhut.com/
panader0
(25,816 posts)I still have some old Zap comix---love R Crumb but never knew about
the band.
Brother Buzz
(36,423 posts)A lot of us old fart comix enthusiasts got a real kick when Micky Rat made a cameo appearance in the film The Diary of a Teenage girl, and understood why she was wearing it (Armstrong dated Phoebe Gloeckner's mother).
This is quite possibly my favorite painting by Robert Armstrong:
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)Gonna send this over to Mr. Dixie, he will love it!
eleny
(46,166 posts)I was editor of my university literary mag. Deciding on the cover was giving me grief. My brother and I were reading the first Zap comic while walking down a street in Manhattan when he said, "Why don't you ask this guy to do it!".
So I contacted the EVO newspaper since they published his 'toons and they got us in touch. Bob was so down and out back then that he said he was sleeping on his publisher's sofa. He was happy for the paying job. We met a few times and he created this cover. I found this image of the front cover online.
DBoon
(22,363 posts)hunter
(38,311 posts)It was full of lead and other neurotoxins too.
It was not good for anyone's health.
I attribute some of my own lifelong health problems to growing up in a severely polluted environment.
People who complain of "too much regulation" don't know what they are talking about.
It's a lot like people who don't vaccinate their kids. Maybe they don't know how bad it was before vaccines. Maybe they are blinded by maladaptive ideologies.
I vividly remember trips to the hospital E.R. for asthma exacerbated by heavy smog. I vividly remember suffering severe life-threatening mumps and whooping cough.
Maybe I fight for a clean environment because I remember how bad it was. Maybe I made sure my kids got all their vaccinations because I remember when there were no vaccines for some of diseases I experienced.
But it's also the right thing to do.
TrogL
(32,822 posts)There was always a brown stream of pollution crossing the horizon.
former9thward
(32,002 posts)Same steam you make in your kitchen. Coming from boilers in the plant. It is clean. If it was that much smoke the whole place would be burning down. People often confuse steam with smoke. People see steam coming from nuclear reactors and they think it is pollutants from the reactor. It isn't, Reactors are the cleanest major energy producers we have.
TexasBushwhacker
(20,185 posts)I remember rubbing the soot off the tree leaves with my fingers. I scratched my head and my fingernails were black. To think people were breathing that shit.