Wednesday 4 March 2015

My lungs

Watery expanses and green between: parks like Burgess provide relief
 04.03.2015
Day 322
Cycling: from home to Waterloo Bridge, and back again in the evening, very slowly, about 14miles round trip (that's the first time I've recorded the distance - looked it up)

The persistant, barking cought that disturbed my (and Rick's) sleep last night and left me weak and wheezy this morning was exacerbated by the cycling commute. The cold air hitting my congested lungs is enough to create irritation, but the congestion on the roads is as bad as it is in my bronchiole and avleoli, so I dread to think how many particulates and chemicals I'm sucking into these organs, whose proud pinkness I often imagine when out running – typical reformed smoker am I.
It is with my breathing apparatus in mind that I sign up on behalf of this London Pollution Campaign
When my children were tiddlers – the two sons, especially suffered from upper respiratory congestion throughout their infancy in the 1990s – I was distressed by the thought that my insistance on urban living was destroying their health. All three assure me, though, that they're proud to be Londoners, as indeed am I. I just wish that the air was breathable. My eldest son, soon to be a father, lives in Berlin. I hope the lungs of his kleine Sohn oder Tochter remain pink and bouncy, despite the BMW fumes. I just assume Berlin has cleaner air, because it has this overall healthy image. That's probably quatsch.
Just checked, it's not quatsch, as I have just read about Soot Pollution League, Berlin in 2012 was rated as having the cleanest air in Europe.

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