A draw back to good weather!

[DALederle]

On Easter Sunday, while watching the Cubs game I noticed that my breathing was getting hard. I was inside the house, in my livingroom but I was smelling a thick odor of campfires or charcol fires as I sat there. Little by little my breathing got harder and harder. I had to use my rescue inhaler to just keep even. For the rest of the day I tried to stay seated and not move around a lot.
This happened to me last year too. During the good weather in the spring and summer. People get out to enjoy their grills, mostly charcol, and don't think about what problems that can be for other people with a sensitivity to smoke, like I have. There is just no way to let people know that their neighbors have breathing problems. Especially since it can be someone in another block, unknown to each other, that's causing the distress. To bad there's not a good way (make that low cost way) to get rid of bad air before someone with health problems are exposed to it.
With all we now know about second hand cigarette smoke there are still people who want to lift the smoking in public bans.
I can only shake my head at this and wonder.
Why anyone, with all we know now, lights that first smokey bar is beyond me.
I've had to switch to a propane grill to I can cook outside. Our last charcol grill was thrown out last fall.
But I'd still rather have nice weather then what we had all winter.
Thank God, spring is here!

Dennis A. Lederle
Grok?
To Infinity and Beyond!

[Kirbstone]

Dennis,
You have described your severe respiratory problems a few times and It pains me to read about it. I am very sorry you have this ongoing problem. But sensitivity to smoke and fumes also affects those of us who don't have respiratory problems. I wouldn't sit downwind of a campfire and move away when the smoke swirls around in different directions.
While smoking has been banned here in all buildings it is still OK to smoke in the street. I wouldn't walk down the sidewalk behind someone who is smoking, as they leave a trail of noxious fumes for several yards behind them, which I for one will not savour.

Our ongoing Springtime Summer weather tempted my wife to camp out with one granddaughter (aged 7) in a homemade teepee down in our lakeside woodland on Easter Saturday night. The evening before we grilled an evening meal on an open brushwood campfire and subsequently they snuggled up together in the teepee until Dawn on Easter Sunday morning. My wife attests that the Dawn Chorus was quite wonderful....it was a glorious morning.

That was the first campfire we lit this year so far. The wife is a former 'Brown Owl',....one who led a troup of Brownies, who are younger girls hoping to be girl guides when they are older.....so she likes woodsmoke a lot more than I do !! (c.f. last pic. in 'Spring in a temperate zone')

Tom K