Unhealthy for sensitive groups.

[eruthros]

Something I will not miss about Philadelphia: being basically instructed to avoid moving around outdoors, as it is "unhealthy for sensitive groups." I mean, I would feel free to ignore the recommendation, if it weren't for the fact that walking three blocks at even a plodding pace makes me wheeze. The combination of the heat, the humidity, and the high particle pollution feels like physical pressure against my chest, like I'm weighted down. I enjoy walking. I like to meander along the Kelly Drive walking path, past all the ridiculous public art and the museum and the boathouses and the bridges, and then walk the couple extra miles to go grocery shopping downtown. It irritates me that this would be unpleasantly sticky (the heat) and unpleasantly asthma-attack-inducing (the pollution). I could deal with just unpleasantly sticky; Ithaca was unpleasantly sticky when I walked my eight miles to various apartments. But the inability to breathe slows me down rather a lot.

Philadelphia can't really decide how to deal with high-pollution days, though. In the Bay Area, they do Spare the Air and bribe everyone into taking public transit by making it all free. Here, they tell us that we should bike or take public transit to work, but also that we should avoid exercise or being outdoors too much because of the heat, and they don't seem to see the conflict there. (They also tell us to turn our a/c units down or off, to reduce the pollution. And then they say that we should spend time in a cool, well-ventilated, air-conditioned area, to reduce the risk of heat prostration. Um. Yes. I'll get on that, as soon as I can figure out how.)

I told m_shell the other day that we'd hit the first of several days of "unhealthy for sensitive groups" warnings, and she said "Philadelphia is unhealthy for sensitive groups."