title:  This Major U.S. City Is Now So Polluted, People With Asthma Are Choking To Death (VIDEO)
text: A staggering expos by Newsweek has revealed that the city and surrounding areas of once-great Detroit, are now so polluted that asthmatic people are literally choking to death.Zoe Schlanger s piece for Newsweek follows the story of 38-year-old asthmatic Jacqueline Carson and her 10-year-old son   forced to River Rogue, a small town of 7,000 on the edge of Detroit by unaffordable housing anywhere better. Prior to moving to the area, her asthma was a footnote in her life, and since, it has become the headline. She suffers multiple crippling attacks a week, and her lungs feel constantly under assault by the toxic air about her. Air which, Schlanger writes, has to be breathed to be believed: As I drove east from the Detroit airport into River Rouge,  she writes,  the acrid stench of rotten eggs filled my rental car despite the windows being rolled up against the cold. I kept driving, and the smell acquired notes of burnt plastic and gasoline. If I had been anywhere else, I d have worried that my car was about to burst into flames. But I was in River Rouge, so I knew better. I pulled into a gas station. As soon as I opened my car door, I could feel the air in the back of my throat like a fine spray of gravel.It s dirty in River Rouge, and everybody here knows it. The way the air smells, and the gas flares, coal piles and smokestacks around every corner don t let you forget. There are 52 sites of heavy industry within a 3-mile radius; 22 of these either produce over 25,000 pounds or handle more than 10,000 pounds of toxic chemical waste, putting them on the Environmental Protection Agency s Toxics Release Inventory Program. For years, the area has also been  out of compliance  for sulfur dioxide, meaning there s more SO 2  a known contributor to asthma in the air than federal rules allow.As with the water crisis in Flint, Michigan is failing to protect its citizens from harm by native industries. Polluting corporations are making the area uninhabitable, while the state stands idly by. As Schlanger uncovered:According to the latest state data, more than 15 percent of Detroit s adults have asthma, a 29 percent higher rate than the rest of Michigan. Detroiters are hospitalized for their asthma three times more frequently than other Michiganders. Being black ups the rate significantly: Black Detroiters are hospitalized for asthma at a rate more than 150 percent that of their white neighborsThese citizens pay their taxes, their mortgages and their rents to live in a place so polluted that people are becoming ill and dying.This is yet another life-critical failure to be added to the expanding list of Michigan s Republican Governor Rick Snyder   who now faces a recall petition by Michigan residents who have been made, quite literally sick, by his ultra-right wing policies. The petition has 60 days to gather 790,000 signatures to begin the process of ridding the state of perhaps the worst Governor in its history. Author of the petition, Rev. David Bullock of Detroit s Greater St. Matthew Baptist Church told WJBK: It s not about Democrats. This is not about Republicans. It s not about whites or blacks. It s not about rich or poor. You have all kinds of folks   rural citizens, urban citizens, people of faith, people who are atheist, [of varying] sexual orientation   we ve got everybody. And you have to ask yourself this question: When everybody agrees, what does that mean? I think that means Rick Snyder s got to go. Let s hope Snyder goes quickly, and the process of repairing the broken state of Michigan can begin in earnest. People s lives and livelihoods depend on it.You can watch a local news report from earlier this year about an increase in emissions from a Detroit factory, and the battle of locals to try to protect themselves and their families.Featured Image via Flickr Creative Commons