Code Red: America's Five Most Polluted National Parks

[underpants]

http://www.npca.org/across_the_nation/visitor_experience/code_red/default.asp

Code Red: America's Five Most Polluted National Parks uses an air pollution index, originally developed by Appalachian Voices for two earlier editions of this report,2 to rank the five most-polluted national parks based on three impacts—haze, ozone, and acid precipitation. Numerous public lands in the United States, such as wilderness areas and wildlife refuges, also suffer from similar air-quality problems. Although these lands are not the focus of this report, the status of the five most-polluted parks is indicative of problems in these other areas and in our own communities as well.

1. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee and North Carolina
Ozone pollution rivals that of Los Angeles, violating federal health standards more than 175 times since 1998 and damaging 30 species of plants.


2. Shenandoah National Park, Virginia
Acidified streams place even the highly prized brook trout, an acid tolerant species, at risk.

3. Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky
On average, rainfall at the park is ten times more acidic than natural conditions.

4. Sequoia and Kings Canyon3 National Parks, California

Ozone levels surpassed human health standards on 61 summer days in 2001. This same pollutant harms sequoia seedlings.

5. Acadia National Park, Maine
Rocky soils like those at Acadia have little defense against acid rain, fog, and snow; one park lake is chronically acidified.

[Birthmark]

1. I was just up in the Smokies last week.

The devastation wrought on the spruce-fir forests of the high elevations is incredible. Between the balsam wooly aldegid and air pollution, the trees in the high elevation are in BIG trouble.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. Acadia is my park. :^(