Letters

Anti-pollution group urges passage of smoke-free act

The years of brainwashing and rhetoric from the tobacco companies still have some people thinking that secondhand smoke is no more than a nuisance — it’s not. It’s a deadly poison.

As soon as it’s inhaled, secondhand smoke causes immediate body chemistry changes. It causes change in the blood flow to your heart in just 30 minutes. It’s responsible for cancers throughout the body. It causes lung disease. Since smoke is a gas, it spreads completely through the air. Unless completely isolated, “separate sections” and smoking “only at the bar” offer essentially no protection. To protect health, secondhand smoke needs to be avoided.

Workplaces and public places like restaurants that are not 100 percent smoke-free are not safe. If the proprietors won’t protect your health, why give them your business? A smoke-free dining directory — available from New Jersey Group Against Smoking Pollution (GASP), www.njgasp.org — will help readers in the nonsmoking majority find restaurants with clean air.

But the need for protection from secondhand smoke is obvious. It’s time New Jersey had a smoke-free air law. Other states are protecting their residents now, including all the Northeast Coast states from Delaware to Maine, plus Florida, North Dakota, Montana and California.

New Jersey shouldn’t be one of the last states to do the same. I urge everyone to contact their legislators in Trenton and ask them to pass the Smoke-Free Air Act — S1926 and A3424.

Douglas Chester, D.D.S.

president, New Jersey GASP

Summit

Sentinel should learn the facts before it condemns

Your May 17, 2005, editorial cartoon about the plan to return the now-clean former CIC site to public use was way off the mark factually and in poor taste.

Though many state and national media outlets toured CIC with the Edison Wetlands Association, the hometown Sentinel chose to ridicule its redevelopment without finding the time to send anyone to actually see for themselves the thoroughness of CIC’s cleanup.

Had you toured the CIC site with us, you would have seen that this site is now as clean as any open space in Edison, thanks to $50 million that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency spent to clean it up. This funding was due in large part to the longtime advocacy of the Edison Wetlands Association, which has also procured $500,000 in Green Acres funding to acquire CIC for parkland and natural areas — money that won’t be coming out of the pockets of Edison taxpayers.

Since cleanup began, Edison Wetlands Association has been heartened by the hundreds of calls, e-mails and letters we’ve received encouraging the cleanup and restoration of this area.

Once the site acquisition is under way, we will work diligently to ensure public participation in CIC’s redevelopment by meeting with residents and any community groups who would like to be involved.

CIC is a rags-to-riches story that has made Edison the national model for successfully cleaning up its contaminated sites and restoring them into something the community can actually use.

Your readers deserve to hear the good news as well as the bad. And the creation of a fresh new park for the community that desperately needs it is great news, indeed.

David Wheeler

director of operations

Edison Wetlands Association

Too much arrogance, not enough communication

I feel there are serious issues in Edison Township, with a lack of communication and an arrogance toward the public.

Lack of communication is personal when changes are occurring in a 200-foot area from one’s home, with no official notice. They have been bragging about increasing the required area for notification distance from 200 to 300 feet. What good is that if they can’t even manage to get out notices for the 200-foot notice? I was particularly upset about the development of property at Hoover Avenue and Amboy Avenue.

Lack of general information about funds collected for the tower has been very sparse and has to be pulled out of the mayor and council. People have to file formal requests for reports. The funds involve a trust fund and as an accountant myself, I would voluntarily insist on submitting reports to anyone, before it was requested.

The mayor’s attendance at meetings … his response is a joke! I seriously doubt that his job as mayor goes on 24/7. He has a duty to respond or be available to the general public for questioning. I’ve heard of an absentee landlord, but never an absentee mayor. It looks like we have an absentee mayor in Edison.

A general arrogance surrounds him whenever he is being questioned. He doesn’t feel he has to respond and usually accuses those asking questions of being politically motivated. Yet he is always ready to pose for pictures. Is that what he was elected for?

Frank Andriuli

Edison