The seasonal accumulation of contaminated air repeats itself each year in the Valley of Mexico.
José Antonio Ordoñez, investigator from Climate Change and Environmental Services AC, explained that the mass of contaminated air is the product of the consumption of oxygen through burning gasoline. The end result accumulates, without leaving the air or circulating and feels “as if a car was burning inside a house and you closed the windows,” said Ordoñez. “Obviously, it’s going to poison you.”
In an interview, he considered it indispensable that the country have machines that work to help you breathe contaminated air.
According to the expert, the ecological capacity to disperse contaminants has been superseded by a ratio of 10:1 and when the Valley of Mexico is contaminated “there are layers of atmosphere that keep the air totally stagnant until wind currents favor the dispersion of contaminants.”
The explanation lies in the fact that each layer of air is like a “sandwich” that envelopes the Valley of Mexico, and where the contaminants we are forced to tolerate stay.
The layer is very cold, and doesn’t permit the displacement of contaminants, which is why in his time Herberto Castillo suggested that generators and fans to promote the movement of the contaminants be placed at the level of this stratospheric layer.
Ordoñez left it clear that there is no way of getting rid of the contaminated air without a mechanical solution, or promoting reforestation as vegetation is the only way of stabilizing the dust, the air, and the aerosol substances that remain at high levels of concentration.
… As if a car was burning inside a house and you closed the windows. Obviously, it’s going to poison you.”
-José Antonio Ordoñez, investigator from Climate Change and Environmental Services AC
One of the options that the experts presented to clear the air are plants that can filter the substances.
“It’s necessary to erect mechanical filters to reduce this contamination. These are like large vacuum cleaners that have a slats to precipitate the carbon dioxide, to form carbon and filter the air.”
According to Ordoñez, these vacuums would have to be the size of a four story building, with a minimum area of five thousand cubic meters, placed in the traffic intersections with the highest concentration of pollutants.
In Mexico these systems do not exist. Environmentalists say that there is an inadequate political will, corrupted by those who say that newer car models will not pollute.
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