Head to Head does the air we breathe

This week’s topic: Exhaust fumes from the Cross City Tunnel and Eastern Distributor should be funnelled into Parliament House

Andrew Woodhouse
Politicians are like zeppelins. They cast dark, sinister shadows over the landscape and are full of hot air. But pumping exhaust gases from burping, farting cars into Parliament House won’t do any good. It’ll make no difference to the toxic haze and witches’ brew in which they concoct their transport policies.

Beyond their limited political election-date horizons, even beyond Macquarie Street itself, our air, what we breathe into our bodies, is slowly killing us.

Car fumes are toxic. Hold on for a chemistry lesson here.  They contain hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, carbon particles, fine particulate matter, aromatic hydrocarbons (benzene), dioxins and possibly lead.

Carbon monoxide (CO) has a mass of 28.010 g/mol, a density of 0.250 g/l at 0º C, a melting point of -205º C, a boiling point of -181.5º C and is soluble in water at 0.0026 g/100 mL (200c).

Umm. Ce? To you and me this means only one thing. CO is a killer. Carbon element gases from car engines are colourless, odourless, tasteless and insidious. When exposed to sunlight, nitrous oxides within them react, creating smog, asthma attacks, heart disease, lung cancer and more air pollution.

In tunnels, these toxic gases accumulate rapidly. They’re re-routed through massive chimneys into the atmosphere whose design Robyn Boyd, famous architect, would have called the ‘new ugliness’.

The RTA, surely an acronym for Rape The Atmosphere, states: ‘To reduce exposure to vehicle emissions in peak periods, close your windows and switch your vehicle ventilation to re-circulate.’

Great. So I walk around with gold fishbowl-type space headgear and an air-tank to protect myself from poisoned air?

There is car use and car abuse. People in cars are a health hazard and should move closer to work to save everyone else a lot of bother. Cars are killing Sydney.

Car poisoning is the new asbestos and will trigger the world’s biggest class action, financially crippling manufacturers.

I’ve said it on this page here before. The car is outmoded and dead. RIP.

When will we realise that the earth does not belong to us, we belong to it.

Peter Whitehead
No-one in their right mind would support such an expensive and pointless project. But Premier ‘recycler of rubbish’ Rees could present it to cabinet as a vote-winner, because plenty of New South Welsh people are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it any more. About the only way not-so-nifty Nathan gets a mandate in 2011 is on a platform to abolish state government (presently his performance merely promises to end state government by the ALP).

Seriously, why funnel exhaust fumes from those big traffic holes into our pollies’ workplace? The fumes are diluted – there is more fresh air than Carr-generated pollutants in that underused overpriced underpass. It were better to open Parliament’s windows to the photochemical smog from the crawling traffic in Macquarie Street to remind our elected leaders that petrol-powered private transport has problems.

The voices of little old ladies bewailing the loss of their 311 bus might also then be heard.

Something has been rotten in the state of New South Wales since the tram tracks were ripped up fifty years back. Co-dependency with the automotive industry has worked out about as well as my wife’s weekend ice bender with the Johns brothers.

Those bemused bozos in state government are not responsible. They are as powerless as King Canute to stem the tide. The overwhelming majority of people have cars and they vote. We got the politicians we deserve.

The Roads and Traffic Authority, on the other hand, is guilty of crimes against humanity, misruling our lives with a demented preference for cars over people. Our inner city suburbs are obscure mazes forced upon us by Poindexter planners puzzling over maniacal mathematical models.

It’s time at least one RTA executive got the fact that traffic flow projections are a warning – WRONG WAY GO BACK – not a justification to splurge billions more encouraging the proliferation of unsustainable metal dinosaurs.

It’s time to reclaim our streets from these faceless bureaucrats. We live here. We have a right to stop Sydney being the place where we paved paradise to put up a parking lot.