July 25, 2007

A Convenient Truth

This week, I learned a startling fact in an underground garage. After a meeting in Palo Alto, I took the elevator in the parking garage down to where my car was parked. There on a concrete post, I saw a sign I had never noticed before. It said (in both English and Spanish):

Warning: This garage contains gasoline and diesel engine exhaust which is known to the State of California to cause cancer and/or reproductive toxicity.

My first thought was, "Duh!" If a person exists who didn't know that cars give off exhaust, then he's too stupid to drive.

My second thought was, "WHAT? Breathing exhaust can give you cancer? Or toxify your reproductive parts?"

Obviously I have not been paying attention.

I used to read about every new medical study in hopes that someone would discover that something besides a healthy lifestyle is the secret to longevity. I mean, if I could eat a spoonful of flaxseed and drink a half cup of pomegranate juice every day instead of exercising, I'd be all over that. I love those stories where they interview a centenarian and ask him the secret to living a hundred years and he says, "A glass of whiskey and a good cigar." It gives hope to the slothful while simultaneously tweaking the nose of the self-righteous yogurt-and-yoga crowd. You gotta love that.

When it seemed to me that medical studies started to contradict each other on a weekly basis, I stopped listening and decided that we don't really know anything. What used to be bad for us is now good. Chocolate, for instance. I choose to believe the studies that show the health benefits of my favorite vice. When another study proves that wrong, as it inevitably will, I'll ignore it.

While the jury is still out on some substances, there are some that are so obviously deadly that it's hard to fool oneself. Inserting a burning tube of tobacco laced with 4000 toxic chemicals into your mouth and inhaling? Clearly a dangerous practice. Drinking drain cleaner? Again, horrifyingly predictable consequences.

But breathing exhaust? In the back of my mind, I must have known that car exhaust is poisonous. I wouldn't wrap my lips around a tailpipe or anything. But I didn't know that sitting at a stoplight could give me cancer or affect my unborn children (if I were still using my reproductive parts).

So, now I have three things to worry about at stoplights:
1. Can I get my lipstick on before the light changes?
2. How many dollars' worth of gas am I burning up?
3. Is the car in front of me giving me cancer?

Some of you just put down your yogurt and said, "What about the fact that your gas-burning vehicle is killing the planet, you dimwit?"

This is why I refuse to see "An Inconvenient Truth." I'm just trying to stay alive here. I can't carry the burden of global warming as well. I guess you could say I just can't handle the truth.