Look what we're breathing

I've just spent been trying to pick the photos which best express the full disgustingness of the smog that hung over Santiago today. This is a topic I have written about before (here and also here), but I will keep coming back to it until it stops bothering me. After due consideration these are the ones I've come up with.







And this was after a few days of rain which everyone looks forward to because it cleans the air. What's really got me worried is that the government body charged with monitoring the air quality and declaring environmental alerts apparently considers that this level of air quality is "good".



This makes me wonder whether they are measuring the right thing, in the right places, and are interpreting the data correctly. To be fair, there are plans underway to improve the monitoring network and the metropolitan anticontamination plan. But I do wish they would hurry up with it! A bit of London-style congestion charging would probably do no harm, while they are about it, although I suspect this may still be some way off. As far as people are concerned, I get the impression that most of them ignore the smog and go about their lives as if it was nothing to do with them. About a month ago, when we were suffering one of the worst episodes of smog, which had actually been oficially decreed an "alert", I overheard a conversation in the lift where one man was telling his colleague about how he was going to drive home to have lunch with his family. I felt as shocked and indignant as if he had lit up in a no-smoking area, but I stayed silent.