The Environmental Impact Statement After Two Generations

Preface

I was born in the South Bronx in 1943, about a ten-minute walk from the old and new Yankee Stadiums. When I was seven years old, I had a bout with asthma, and as I grew older I developed serious pollen and some food allergies. Automobile traffic was growing, and filled the air with fumes that made my allergies worse. Our organic trash was burned in the apartment house incinerator, sending large clusters of ash through our apartment, if we (usually I) neglected to close the windows. Several nearby electricity-generating stations emitted foul-looking particles. When there was an air inversion in the fall, clouds of cough-inducing materials would hang in the air. The sewage from our area went untreated into the Hudson River, a fact I ...