Frank Lautenberg: “with all of the important issues we constantly face in life, none compares to our concern for the health of our…”

“with all of the important issues we constantly face in life, none compares to our concern for the health of our children. But the health of our children depends not only on us but what others might be doing--such as poisoning our air with secondhand smoke or deliberately fouling the air our kids breathe. Few would stand by while a smoker puffs away where your child is inhaling. That is why we worked so hard to prohibit smoking on airplanes--to keep someone else's smoke out of our children's lungs. Yet when emissions from a powerplant in one State threaten people in a neighboring State, too often nothing is done about it. Make no mistake, pollution doesn't recognize State boundaries. Communities across our country are being forced to bear the consequence of another community's polluters, and this is happening in my State of New Jersey, where people are suffering because dirty air is blowing into our communities from out-of-State smokestacks. Look at this horrible picture. Anything more threatening would be hard to imagine. The toxins coming out of smokestacks like these don't disappear. They typically wind up polluting playgrounds and school yards in New Jersey, and other eastern States. In fact, a single powerplant in eastern Pennsylvania is responsible for more sulfur pollution in New Jersey than all our State powerplants combined.…”