Air Quality Standards

Re “U.S. Poised to Toughen Air Quality Standards,” Nov. 25: It is time we as citizens got active to stop these types of draconian laws. They will have an economic impact that could likely put us in another depression.

If businesses can’t meet impossible standards, guess what they will do? Go out of business or produce the goods in another country. If truckers can’t meet the standards or have to spend millions of dollars to retrofit their trucks, what will be the cost of everything we buy? If we have to keep dust down, what will the impact on agriculture be?

We all want cleaner air, but as an industrial society we cannot stop overnight without a major disruption in our living standards.

We can clean up the air gradually without any adverse impact on our society as a whole. This is an attack on our lifestyle at best and our very existence at worst.

PATRICK BAILEY

Lancaster

* I applaud the Clinton administration’s initiative to wage a more meaningful war against pollution by toughening the federal air quality standards. There is no more urgent issue facing us.

We cannot allow the corporate giants, whose mighty dollar towers over us, to decide how healthy we can afford to be! General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Chevron, Mobil, et al. must not stop this initiative. They must be held responsible for the role they play as originators of much of the pollution that endangers our children’s lives.

BARBARA G. OCKWELL

Encino