We are breathing bad air and it's ruining our health.

 Dr Abe V Rotor

Air pollution in New Delhi; India;  Paris, France

Smog over Sydney, Australia; Beijing, China

 Smoke belching vehicles - unstoppable, QC

Bad air days (BAD) photos from the Internet

Dump site - breeding place of disease, poisonous and obnoxious gases, QC

Bad air accumulates and moves, such as the case over Hong Kong. Bad air moves in two directions - to Bombay, India; and to neighboring Guangdong where pollution meets and mixes over the Pearl River and forms a shroud as it meets the sea. Similar cases occur over Beijing, Tokyo and San Francisco. The stale air hangs as an inversion layer practically choking the city.

Rapid economic growth has led to record levels of pollution, producing filthy air rising and spreading over highly industrial centers and densely populated cities. Here power plants, factories and vehicles release pollutants into the air, and as the sun heats up the ground, the polluted air rises. But polluted air cools quickly over water and sinks to the surface and disperses. Without strong wind to clear it away, the pollution mix can build up over time, leading to BAD (bad air days).

What is in the polluted air?

Sulfur Dioxide is produced by coal-burning power plants and heavy industry. Effects: reduces lung function, exacerbates wheezing and shortness of breath. Builds acid rain with other gases.

Nitrogen Dioxide comes from emissions of vehicles and power plants. Effects: helps form smug, exacerbates asthma and increases chances of respiratory infections.

Respirable suspended particulates. These tiny particles are created chiefly by diesel exhaust and coal-burning power plants. Effects: can penetrate deep into lungs and aggravate serious respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

Ozone is formed by the reaction in sunlight of volatile organic compounds and CFCs that primarily come from cars, and household byproducts. Effects: causes chest pain and coughing, aggravates asthma.

Hydrogen sulfide, ammonia gas, elevated CO2 from piggeries and ranches, swamps and polluted rivers and lakes. Algal bloom contributes significant amounts of these gases.

Suspended dusts as what happens during sandstorms and volcanic eruptions, such as what happened during the Pinatubo eruption, and recently, in Iceland and Brazil. Remember the Dust Bowl of the Dakotas in the thirties when the air became was loaded with dusts which lasted for weeks.

Dioxin, the most poisonous substance ever formulated by man is in the air since plastic was discovered. Pastics are the most popular material used in the household, industry and agriculture. Dioxin is produced by burning plastics. With increasing use of pesticides, the air is getting thicker with chlorinated hydrocarbons, organophosphates, and other harmful residues.

Radiation is the result of fallout from nuclear accidents like what happened in Fukushima, Japan, in March this year, and in Chernobyll in Kiev twenty years ago, not to mention the Three-Mile nuclear incident in the US in the eighties.

Pathogens - Spores of disease-causing organisms that infect not only humans but animals and plants as well, ride on air current, and on particulates suspended in air. Thus the hypothesis that epidemic diseases move on air has strong scientific evidences.

Are we safe inside our schools and houses?

Bad air builds up surepticiously in airconditioned halls and rooms. Don't be deceived by the comfort of coolness lulling you to sleep. Defective and leaking aircon units virtually make the room a gas chamber. There are cases of death due to poisonous gases from leaking aircon.

Defective exhaust or overload results in buildup of Carbon Dioxide and its more poisonous cousin, Carbon Monoxide (CO).

When students become inattentive and drowsy, yawning, complaining of headache, nausea, and the like, suspect the air conditoning unit as the culprit - and the classroom heavy with bad air.
As a teacher, when confronted with this situation, immediately institute these measures.

• Give the class a break. A recess outside the classroom is preferred.
• Open all windows and doors
• Check the aircon, the exhaust fan with the aircon technician
• Inform management.
• Give sufficient break during brownout

Bad air inside rural Asian homes kills hundreds of thousands a year. The most poisonous atmosphere in the Asian region is found not only in rapidly modernizing cities like New Delhi or Beijing but inside the kitchens. Millions of families heat their abodes and cook in open fires that belch CO and other noxious fumes at levels up to 5000 times the international safety. Families and children spend hours each day in poorly ventilated homes and kitchens. Although this is as old as humankind, living in tight quarters and poverty have aggravated the situation.

Solution: improved stove, more efficient with least pollution. Improved stoves are subsidized by governments such as in China and India, which also back us the campaign by proper education, and strict pollution control laws.

And lastly, have trees and plants around the house, on backyards and sidewalks, on idle lots and parks to increase Oxygen level and cool the surroundings. But never keep plants inside your house, and never in your bedroom. At night plants give off CO2 as they, like other organisms, respire. In our knowledge of photosysthesis, the dark phase of this biological process takes place at night. ~

                                                  Air pollution over Beijing s seen from space.

 Bad Air Day in London

Quotation for the Day on Cooperation

Dr Abe V Rotor

"We are made for cooperation - like feet, like hands... to act against one another is, then, contrary to nature."

- Marcus Aurelius

True to his philosophy, Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) was the first emperor to appoint a co-ruler when the empire became too huge to administer from a single capital. He navigated Rome masterfully through severe difficulties. The tragedy is that his philosophy – which is about self-restraint, duty, and respect for others – was so abjectly abandoned by the imperial line he anointed on his death. Historian Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, starts by describing Marcus Aurelius as the last of the good emperors.

Acknowledgement: Internet photo; Reference: Military History, Thinkers at War

Monet's masterpiece in the twilight of his life

Dr Abe V Rotor 
Acknowledgment: photos from the Internet, Wikipedia. 

Waterlilies - Claude Monet's Signature

Claude Monet (1840-1926); murals in a museum enshrine his fame.  

Monet painted his famous murals Waterlilies towards the end his long productive life as an impressionist. He worked with fading eyesight and in frail health. Few men have shown such an extraordinary feat.  Among them was the great modern painter Pablo Picasso. Ernest Hemingway's Nobel prize winning novel, The Old Man and the Sea, pictures such rare quality with sweet irony of anonymity.

What a genius to make a masterpiece with the last rays of the sun, 
drawing each like thread and weaving the aging colors of rainbow; 
while thousands at their bidding rise early to catch the rising sun,
aiming at fortune - and failing - search it at the end of the rainbow. ~

The Art of Loafing and Frolicking

Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature School on Blog

Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid with Ms Melly C Tenorio

738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday

Morong, Bataan, April 26, 2014

Let the world pass by - 

I am back to the womb

of my mother and Mother Earth

with the sands of time blowing,

shifting with the will of the sea and wind;

who cares about my footsteps behind? 

 Bury me free from cares and worries

and I shall be the most happy guy;

Make me a sarcophagus,

one with happy face, not mask of death,

immortality beyond I do not seek,

for my life on earth I am content, 

frolic and loafing the most important -

the lost art of the Good Life.  

Bury me alive for a moment; 

stop the clock, hold the world still, 

hold the tides, silence the shore 

that I can hear laughter ringing 

in the sands of time. ~

Practical Hydroponics: A Kitchen Garden

Dr Abe V Rotor

Three-week old kitchen garden

You can grow kamote or sweet potato tops in the kitchen. It also serves as a greenery of sort on the window sill.

Fill to three-fourth a convenient glass jar with tap water. Place a healthy tuber on the mouth of the jar. To keep it steady, stick three pieces of toothpick like a tripod. Add water daily as roots develop. Be sure to replace water weekly to prevent mosquitoes from breeding in the jar.

In a week's time or two you can start harvesting. At first allow the tops to extend. Just clip the leaves you need in your cooking. Rotate the position of the tuber towards the source of light, so that you will have more shoots, and greener and bigger leaves.

Now you have a dish garden for a whole month or longer. You can grow fresh onion leaves with this technique. Try it on garlic.

You see, this is simple hydroponics - soil-less gardening. It is introduction to the science of hydroponics and aeroponics. For school childre, why don't you try this as your project?

Read more about hydroponics and aeroponics. Happy gardening!

Ballpen War!

Refill, give your spent ballpen a second or third life. 
Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature School on Blog
Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School-on-Air) with Ms Melly C Tenorio
738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday

Tips to win the war 

1. Refill, give your spent ballpen a second or third life.
2. Be consistent with the ballpen you use to enhance your penmanship and writing skill.
3. Pick one for function, rather than fancy.
4. Buy the brand who have already tried (nakasanayan), with an extra filler (that fits).
5. As much as possible, don't buy the expensive brands, otherwise you will depend exclusively on their refills.
6. Suspect if the cost is very low. Most likely it is a promo, a throw away.
7. Dispose ballpens you are not using before they get dry. Never mind the sentimental value; they are for friends and the needy.
8. Your ballpen is personal, as much as possible don't let others use it. Put your name for identification. Like any belonging give its due care.
9. Ballpens have been the culprit of damaged clothes (and embarrassment), ugly marks, poor grades, frustrations, and even in quarrels and fights. Keep dignified.
10.Talk to your teachers. Include in your recycling project "giving a new life to ballpens." Write your local leaders to promote this campaign. Don't patronize brands that are not cooperative.Rage against the ballpen  

Rage against the ballpen -
overbuilt with very little bullet,
body plastic carcinogenic,
spills and blots, cheap unwashable ink,
signatures, trademarks makers' gimmick,
obsolescence hidden from public.

Rage against the ballpen -
craftsmanship appeals emotion,
far deserving its noble function;
remote from once building a nation
mightier than the sword that it was born,
greed has taken over - sad, forlorn,

Rage against the ballpen
no more the names that carried its name
death sans laurels beaten in the game,
save the pioneers of yester fame;
aloft, but to save their dying name,
instead of joining the ballpen campaign.

Rage against the ballpen
refill for second life, third maybe,
refill at large, one or two or three,
with brand or without, or given free,
for the children's thrift and study
to save the earth, and prayer for Thee.~ 
       

Author's collection. I have preserved these pens - and more. I have always looked to the time when I can revive them, give them a second or third life by refilling each one with the appropriate type. 

I succeeded in some. But my collection is increasing because there is no standard refill in the market, and the life of ballpens are getting shorter. Lose the cap and you lose the pen. One accidental drop destroys the ball point - goodbye to the ballpen, even if it's a new one. 

 A waste of money indeed, these retired pens and ball pens before their time. While millions of schoolchildren all over the world have nothing to write at all. Let's join the campaign. We will prevail in the same way we survived in the "Cola War," and the
"Shampoo War."

Things to do. 

1. Pool spent and discarded ballpens in the family, in school, in the community.

2. Arrange with a supplier of ball pen refills. Involve members, organizations.

3. Sustain campaign on calendared events: Earth Day, Ecology Week, or without fanfare. Hold a contest.

4. Make your own ball pen with bamboo reed, rolled paper, and other environment friendly materials. All you need to buy is the filler. Give prizes, appreciation.

5. Shift to ink pen instead, it's more economical. A bottle of ink may be equivalent to writing output of dozens of disposable ball pens. ~

Giant Philodendron

Dr Abe V Rotor

University of Santo Tomas, Manila 2011

They say you are an epiphyte, 

commensal to an acacia tree;

securing your foothold for free;

I say, you're riding on its might

And height to reach out for the sun,

as your deciduous host lay bare;

by some genie's power and care

like a returning prodigal son.

You clothe your host in queer fashion,

gather the mist and catch the rain,

and make her regal worthy to reign,

indeed you're a true companion. ~