Quote Originally Posted by zoom-zoom View Post
Yeah...they do a lot of heating with coal and all of those diesel engines are not the more modern clean-burning type. I had the black snot, too...and was sick much of the time I was in the UK (4 months).
Yuck! Actually, I'm surprised I didn't have the black snot when I was on my medical mission trip. We were in Nairobi, Kenya (working in Kibera, the largest slum) and the air quality there is really not good. Cooking in the slums is done over charcoal fires, there is a lot of traffic, and most vehicles are diesel (and not the clean type). You could see and smell all that smoke and exhaust in the air. I think a lot of what we saw in the clinics and treated as "allergies" (red, itchy eyes; runny noses; scratchy throats) was partly irritation from the pollution. One member of our team was having some bad eye irritation from it; the rest of us were OK apart from the occasional tickly cough. It was probably a good thing I didn't go for any runs while I was there!