Once world's smoggiest, Mexico City cuts pollution

Posted on Friday, 12.26.08
Once world's smoggiest, Mexico City cuts pollution

Associated Press
MEXICO CITY -- Gabriela Escalante stalks the rumbling streets alongside newspaper, peanut and candy vendors, wading deep into traffic at red lights across town.

Her eyes are fixed on tailpipes.

A member of Mexico City's ''ecoguarda,'' or environmental police, she and some 50 colleagues are on the lookout for white clouds of toxic exhaust, stopping hundreds of offending motorists each day, issuing $100 fines and confiscating license plates -- a small but urgent army fighting the capital's infamous air pollution.

''We detect, we detain and we fine,'' said Escalante, 27. ``This is the air we all breathe.''

Not long ago, air in this throbbing capital was so bad that cyclists wore surgical masks. Birds fell dead in mid-flight, and children used brown crayons to draw the sky. Ozone exceeded safe levels on 97 percent of days in the year.

But the metropolis ranked the world's most polluted by a 1992 U.N. report has since slashed some of its worst emissions by more than three-quarters and has become a model for improving urban air quality.

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http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/827188.html