Each time you drive to work or school, use your heater, clean your windows or even gel your hair, you create air pollution you make choices that can reduce pollution. You are not expected to not make any air pollution, (even though that would be good). You are only expected to reduce it by not making to much waste. When more people make clean air choices, we'll all breathe easier. About 7 tons per day of smog-forming gases and almost a ton of inhalable particles are spared from the air we breathe due to use of bicycles rather than motor vehicles. People choosing to pedal rather than drive usually replace short automobile trips that are disproportionately high in pollutant emissions. Many newer vehicles are designed to produce even lower levels of emissions. These vehicles are called "low emission vehicles". The ARB carries out a non-regulatory Indoor Air Quality and Personal Exposure Assessment Program that includes sponsored research, exposure assessment, development of indoor air quality guidelines, and public education and outreach. The goal of the Indoor Program is to identify and reduce exposures to indoor air pollutants. Today, because of industrial pollution, everybody carries in his or her body over 500 chemicals that would not have been in a person living in the 1920's. It's not really surprising then that over the same time period cancer rates have risen to such an extent that one in three people alive now will be diagnosed with cancer at sometime in their life. Scary, but it lies within our grasp to change things. Industrial chemicals in the air, in the soil, in the water and in our food are not the only cause of cancer, but they are almost certainly a major one. .
More than fifteen years ago Greenpeace set out to achieve the total extinction of poisonous chemicals from the environment. An enormous task that some people said was impossible.