Editor,
I love this time of year, pulling out all the lights and ornaments for decorating, getting menus ready for holiday guests, thinking about the French hot chocolate my hubby makes once a year on the first day of Hanukkah/Xmas, and of course, opening the (nonplastic) presents.
But, best of all, this is the first year we will invite Santa down our gas-free chimney for his milk and homemade shortbread cookies.
God knows how he escaped all those years of accidents but there’s one thing he may not have escaped … NO2-nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide produced from fireplace, stove and furnace gases.
While counting his blessings he didn’t catch on fire all these years, he wasn’t even thinking about the side effects of exposure to NO2 gases; now he may be suffering as a result.
Mrs. Klaus has been visiting many-a-home, after attending the Bay Area Quality Management District meeting (650 online letters and 76 in personal comments lobbying in support for zero-free emission furnaces (by 2029) and water heaters (by 2027), she learned that folks don’t realize they are filling up their living rooms with gas fumes that create asthma, cognitive decline like memory issues and physical growths like cysts in the brain that lead to all sorts of odd behavior.
All SHE wants for Xmas is a safe work-environment for Santa Clause. Here is one article she shared: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4909253.
Jenn Bulka
Redwood City
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(2) comments
Interesting letter, Ms. Bulka, but I have a few questions… If Santa has been going up and down, perhaps billions of chimneys for however long he’s been doing it and he hasn’t had any adverse health impacts, why would you think it would affect him now? And who is this Mrs. Klaus character and why does SHE think SHE has more influence than Santa’s wife, Mrs. Claus? Shouldn’t this nosy Mrs. Klaus also be telling Santa to consider Wegovy or Ozempic? But again, Santa seems to be doing okay carrying extra weight all these years .
I love your letter! Bringing humor to very serious health concerns. Unlike Santa, we have real bodies that are very much affected by smoke from burning wood and by Benzene, Zylene, and Toluene as well as the better known pollutants like nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide from gas appliances. The first list are known causes of breast cancer and 1in 6 women gets breast cancer! Why do we think this is ok?
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