California Construction Trucking Association (CCTA)

Some of you may remember that around April of 2010, I wrote about the County Health Rankings for our California Counties (also see: www.countyhealthrankings.org). Frankly, after reading that report, I was shocked to see that our unhealthiest county in California was Del Norte, it ranked 56 out of 56, dead last. What really grabbed my attention about all of this was the fact that Del Norte County showed no unhealthy pollution days in that year, not one. Yet the good folks of this far northwest county (which borders Oregon and the Pacific Ocean) were supposedly so unhealthy that they were dropping like flies.

In late March of this year, the second County Health Rankings (CHR) report was released, and I am pleased to inform our members in Del Norte Co. that your county is no longer our unhealthiest in this state. You have moved up (or down) one notch to 55, having been replaced by a newly awarded and apparently very unhealthy county called Trinity. Trinity County is geographically just southeast of Del Norte.

Once again, a rural county, which proudly boasts of majestic rivers and streams, beautiful mountains, pristine forests, and very clean air. Can you believe that Trinity is now the unhealthiest county in California in which to live – with all these great natural gifts?

Curious about this all, I went online (Google) and made a quick trip to the Trinity County website. The home page there said the following, "Trinity County has no traffic lights, freeways, parking meters, or incorporated cities." Surely this sounds like God's country!

Than just two days following the release of the County Healthy Rankings 2011 Report, our friends at the American Lung (Lobby) Association (ALA) separately released their own State of the Air 2011 Report for California.

I began to compare the two reports, and what a conflict there was.

As I looked through the CHR report to compare county rankings, I once again noticed that Marin County in the ALA report was ranked number one, the healthiest county in California.

I also noticed that the number four healthiest county according to CHR was Santa Clara County. A county that has 3 interstate highways, U.S. 101, and 8 expressways. Yes, Santa Clara rated 4th in overall health and it had a modest 9.9% unemployment rate. But confusingly it received an "F" overall from the ALA for its poor air quality.

I am reminded of the biblical saying, "Man does not live by bread alone." Nor does man live by clean air alone. There are many factors that contribute to one's overall health, as the CHR.org report considers. Interestingly, none of the factors listed in the CHR report was even considered in the ALA report.

The following quote is from the ALA's own website, "Research had already connected pollution from heavy highway traffic to higher risks for heart attack, allergies, premature births, and the death of infants around the time they are born."

It appears to this layperson that what is killing the folks in Trinity County is not unclean air but unemployment and poverty, a fact many in our state still fail to recognize. Trinity County currently has an unemployment rate of 19.2%.

Curious about how other counties around me faired, I noticed the figures for Lake County, home too many of our members. It was given an "A" by the ALA, yet the CHR.org report ranked Lake County the 53rd unhealthiest county here. Once again, poverty and unemployment are the heaviest weighted factors; the unemployment rate there is 18.2%.

When our once-great state takes away the businesses and industries that once provided jobs (manufacturing) and income for our residents, we appear to be doomed to premature death.

So congratulations on your great air. Unfortunately, those in Lake County will also likely die from not air pollution but poverty-related causes prematurely, and they won't be around to enjoy all the clean skies. I also wonder when the 236,000 new clean, green car industry jobs will be available there as promised by Next 10, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that lobbies for the growth of the state's clean tech sector.

Also, I wasn't very shocked by the fact that the ALA Report Card for California made practically every newspaper headline in the state, while I found only one publication that mentioned the Healthy County Rankings report and that was in the local Chico newspaper. The Chico newspaper article noted that, "For mortality Butte County (F for air, 13.2% unemployment) ranked 46th and Glenn County (B for air, 16.5% unemployment) ranked 44th among 56 counties measuring premature death."

Phyliss Murdock, director of Butte County Public Health department thinks that high poverty rates contribute to a number of serious health problems. "You can't take a look at overall health quality without looking at poverty," she explained.

So my advice to all is: enjoy your lives to the fullest and if you are lucky enough to have a job, I would roll down that window in your car or truck and take a big whiff of the deadly air around you. Having a job, even if it is driving a truck means that you aren't one of the many unemployed, living in poverty, the real killer in my and many others' opinion.

I also seriously believe that none of us should let this constant environmental fear mongering about how dirty our air is, change the way we live our lives. We all know the air here is cleaner than it has ever been in modern times and that we are all living longer than ever. If you really look at the self-serving organizations and people behind the "dirty air" propaganda it is all too clear how unethical they have become.

I'll close my report with the wonderful quote from Fresno son, former professor and scholar, Victor Davis Hanson, from his recent column, Flexible Moral Outrage. In it he said, "There is a vast machinery of selective liberal outrage, fueled and lubricated by the media, universities, and celebrity entertainment. When the redistributive welfare state starts to run out of money, the gears and pulleys are flipped on and shrill charges of greed, cruelty, nativism, and racism spew out of the production line." He forgot "polluters." You see he is dead-on; the vast machinery of selective liberalism controlling at least this state is running out of money – our money – and they require fear of anything and everything in order to control all the idiots they have created! Through this fear they will next convince the majority that more taxes are the cure.

I'm hoping the Gaia rapture comes early for all them!

Finally, I do enjoy hearing from you, so please feel free to drop me an email. I won't be answering my cell phone anymore; a report at the end of May said it may cause brain tumors. Time to give them all up – enviro's first!