20: Pollution

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Page ID: 39261

Melissa Ha and Rachel Schleiger
Yuba College & Butte College via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

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Chapter Hook

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic many people in the United States were feeling the fatigue of wearing face masks for protection. However, people in the United States should consider themselves lucky that normally their air is clean enough that face masks are only really necessary for people who have sensitive immune systems (to things like the flu season, wildfire season, and allergy season). Thus, masks are not a normal part of life for people in the United States. However, in some places around the world, masks are normally worn due to heavy air pollution. For example, people living or working in the cities of China wear masks as a daily part of life. Every day, people wear masks to protect their lungs. Although pollution is decreasing due to policies set in place to fight pollution, it hasn’t yet made masks an unnecessary part of everyday life.

Figure \(\PageIndex{a}\): Mask garbage. Image by Pixabay (Public Domain).

Attribution

Modified by Rachel Schleiger (CC-BY-NC).