Saturday, December 17, 2005

Newspaper ignorance!

Why even read the junk science these ignoramuses print?

Mlive.com's Printer-Friendly Page: "
Error shifts local rankings on bad air 'list of infamy'
Thursday, December 15, 2005
By Jeff Alexander and Dave LeMieux
CHRONICLE STAFF WRITERS
Muskegon Heights can breathe easy, but Muskegon County residents who live along the Lake Michigan coast may be wheezy due to industrial air pollution that blows across the lake from Chicago and Gary, Ind.
That was the gist of a correction The Associated Press issued late Wednesday, after the news service reported that people living in Muskegon Heights breathe some of the nation's most polluted air.
An AP story read on TV newscasts and published in newspapers across the state Wednesday, including The Chronicle, reported that four of the state's five most at-risk neighborhoods for health hazards due to industrial air pollution were in Muskegon Heights. As it turns out, residents in four mostly white areas in Muskegon, Norton Shores and Roosevelt Park face some of the nation's most serious health risks from breathing polluted air, according to EPA data analyzed by the AP.
Local health officials said they are skeptical of the rankings and the methods used to create them.
'It doesn't seem plausible to me,' said Ken Kraus, director of the Muskegon County Health Department. 'It would seem to me that places producing the pollution, places like Houston, Detroit and Gary, would have the highest pollution levels.
'There has to be some dissipation of that stuff (smog-forming air pollution) when it comes across the lake,' Kraus said.
Muskegon Heights City Manager Melvin C. Burns II said he didn't think Wednesday's erroneous article will have a long-range negative effect on the city.
'It's safe to breathe the air in Muskegon Heights,' Burns said. 'We kno"

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