Southland Jobs, Air Quality

Your editorial of Aug. 18 on air quality suggests that we should be sad that AMQD scientists have quit Los Angeles. Not so. It will be easy to find less extreme scientists who understand that people need to eat as well as breathe clean air. After that, we give the departing scientists the locations of all of the industries that they ran out of California and air fare to those locations. Then we wait and hope they chase some of those good, revenue-generating jobs back to us.

Oh, and by the way, you failed to mention that the Clean Air Act can and should be amended.

FRED CHATTERSON

Littlerock, Calif.

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* On Aug. 9, I read of the mass exodus of nine respected scientific and economic advisors to the AQMD with dismay, but with the hope that now that the alarm has been sounded, people would rise up and demand a more effective pollution control program.

But David Goodreau, chairman of the Small Manufacturers Assn. in Glendale (letter, Aug. 15), says good riddance! In a remarkable statement of self-interest masked as public concern, he refers to these experts as “zealots” and calls for a continued emphasis on industrial development.

As one who has had trouble breathing the dreadfully polluted air of the past five days, I say let’s put breathing first.

BEVERLY TOY

Orange