OPINION/COMMENTARY

Why Mother Earth Needs Head and Shoulders

This month saw the emergence of yet another study about the environment. When these things come out, it is tempting to tune out. Inevitably, a hard core of environmentalists will rush forward to declare the planet doomed and the human race responsible, while a hard core of naysay-happy scientists will meet the claims with an abundance of evidence that...well, that the environmentalists haven't got any evidence themselves. By the time they're done, some of us have turned into environmental paranoids, some of us have purposely started chucking Styrofoam and old computers into landfills as an expression of defiance, and the rest of us have quickly moved on to more manageable topics that evoke less moral passion, such as abortion or the death penalty. The interesting thing, though, is that this latest study seems to have surprised everyone without particularly serving as perfect ammunition for either side of the pollution debate. It turns out, according to research published in the April issue of Science magazine, that more than 50 percent of the fine dust in the earth's atmosphere comes, not from sinister man-made creations, but from natural sources including dandruff, animal hair, dead skin, and decaying leaves. These are not products of the industrial age. They are perfectly, well, organic substances that are doing nasty things like blocking light from the sun, causing climate change and perhaps even spreading disease. So the darling songbird flying across a clear blue sky may be contributing as much to the level of dust pollution through the particles left behind by its feathers as any man-made soot or pollution....

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