Note: This post is originally from our partner website, Healthascope. It can also be read in its entirety here.

How do we protect ourselves from air? We’re breathing it in constantly! Beside that, what’s the problem? If I’m not on a street corner or next to a smoker, the only thing I smell is the aroma of dinner on the stove.

But if there’s toxic air on the street corner (you know, gasoline and diesel exhaust) and there are factories and smokestacks belching their toxic brew into the air, you can bet that at the very least, low concentrations are making it into your home. Depending upon where you live, you potentially have high concentrations getting into your living space.

Why does it matter? According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA):

If you have been following the controversy over why Mary Gade was forced to resign from her post as head of the U.S. EPA’s Region 5 Office in Chicago, you may have encountered the question, “So what? People get fired unfairly all the time. Why does this matter so much?”

If you’re just joining us and would like some insight into what has happened on this story so far, here are EnviroHumanImpacts articles on the matter:

EPA Ousts Mary Gade
Continuing Coverage and Commentary: EPA Gade Controversy
More Mary Gade Coverage (Or Is It Less?)

But back to, “Why does this matter so much?” Fair enough question with a fair enough answer. Sure, people are fired all the time, and many times one could conclude they were fired unfairly. Many, like Gade seems to have been, may have been doing their job and doing it well.

Of course, they all matter, but Gade’s firing is a matter of public safety regarding major industrial chemical pollution. That’s right, say it again, “major industrial chemical pollution.” Dioxin, in Michigan, released by Dow Chemical, at levels thousands of times greater than the federal and Michigan state cleanup standards is seeming to get a pass.

Readers are contacting EnviroHumanImpact, curious about what has happened in the firing/forced resignation of Mary Gade, who until recently was head of the U.S. EPA’s Region 5 office in Chicago. She contends that this is about a dispute regarding dioxin cleanup between the EPA, specifically her office, and Dow Chemical.

You can read our original article on the matter, here. Our continuing coverage from May 4 is also a good read.

Yesterday, we mentioned a Wall Street Journal article that gave some more insight into the Gade matter. It does offer a little more than the original Chicago Tribune story that broke this news last Friday. Because just as yesterday, the mainstream media seems to be shirking away from this story, we’ll pull some excerpts from the Journal’s piece to help give our readers a better sense of what’s going on.

Yes, it’s from a couple of days ago, May 3, and the continued question is, “where is the mainstream media on this one?” Is what was front page controversy on Friday not newsworthy on Monday?

We originally brought you the story yesterday of Mary Gade, an EPA Official who has been asked to resign and has done so, allegedly because of her efforts to have Dow Chemical clean up dioxin.  The story we excerpted with commentary was from the Friday Chicago Tribune: EPA Official Ousted While Fighting Dow.

This story is of great interest to EnviroHumanImpact, because on the surface of this firing, Gade’s ouster was due to her pursuing her duties to enforce the laws breached by Dow (regarding the environment).  Who knows what kind of leverage Dow has used to influence the EPA or Bush Administration (or both) to have Gade removed from their corporate back?  Have there been similar firings during the Bush Administration?

Where is the Mainstream Media on this? The point here is that there are a lot of unanswered questions about a situation that is very reminiscent of the U.S. Attorney Firing Scandal.  What’s sad is that the Chicago Tribune covered the story on Friday but EHI has not yet been able to find a follow-up article in print or online Tribune stories.

Seemingly underreported, but what made front-page news on Friday’s (May 2, 2008) Chicago Tribune is a story about an EPA official who was told to resign or be fired. Read the entire story here.

The story begins:

SAGINAW, Mich. – The battle over dioxin contamination in this economically stressed region had been raging for years when a top Bush administration official turned up the pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up.

Now, she has been asked to leave, and has complied.

On Thursday, following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade’s interactions with Dow, the administration forced her to quit as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Midwest office, based in Chicago.

Gade told the Tribune she resigned after two aides to national EPA administrator Stephen Johnson took away her powers as regional administrator and told her to quit or be fired by June 1.

Gade contends she was forced out of her job because of her work to hold Dow Chemical to the laws governing cleanup of dioxin.

What do I do with my old electronics? I know the feeling. You have something new but the older version, the one you replaced, still works. Let’s say you replaced your ink jet printer with a laser jet printer all-in-one, printer, copier, scanner, and fax. But your old printer still works and you have no idea if you should keep it, “just in case,” throw it away, or give it away.

Chances are, keeping it is not the best option. Most items like that are kept until one realizes he has kept way too many “just in case” items and purges them in one fell swoop. When your new one eventually stops working, you are most likely going to go out and purchase a new one and not dig out the dusty ink jet printer from the basement which now has bugs in it (literally) and where did its power cord and software go?

Certainly, you could reuse just about any of the grocery bags that make it to your home still in one piece. But usually they do make it without breaking, because it’s common practice to put heavier loads into a double paper or plastic bag.

The amount of waste generated by grocery bags is avoidable by recycling them, either through a recycling center, or replacing your own packaging paper use, for example, with grocery bags. So at one time, I cut open paper grocery sacks to use the paper to package books I had sold on Amazon.com.

When I ceased my selling activity, I decided to change my habits in order to stop accumulating paper bags. (In retrospect, the paper is thicker than other packaging options, like recycled plastic envelopes, which would save slight amounts of shipping costs for me, as well as fuel savings for less weight shipped).

I have purchased a few reusable plastic grocery bags, shaped the same way as a typical paper bag, but they can be reused over and over, saving the stores from using paper or plastic bags for my use every time I go — I bring my own — saving the environment from having to endure the waste and recycling centers from having more to process (they have enough in newspapers).

The Attitude: Increased energy consumption leads to more pollution.

How many times do we see a light sitting idly on, helping no one to see, but nonetheless causing pollution? What causes this foolishness? We know of the economic benefit to reducing our own energy consumption: lower power bills.

We also have made it easy as can be to flick a switch or press a button to turn lights on and off. The amount of time and energy it takes is negligible.