Dear Editor:

It is funny how many things you can adjust to in life. You can buy bottled water for the next time a pipe breaks, and you are told you can't drink what comes out of your faucet. You can put more bars on your windows, or buy a security system if your house get broken into. You can leave earlier to work when the traffic worsens, so you can still get there on time. You can work extra hours, or cut back on other expenses when your taxes go up. However, I can't figure out how to adapt to not breathing.

Each morning I breathe air filled with particulates, ozone, carbon monoxide and maybe even some other more exotics like the PAH's from the soil or roof repairs. Now I don't take it personally because I know that whether I live in my row house on Eighth Street, or in the Holland Gardens, or a high rise at Newport, we all breathe the same polluted air. If I worked for the EPA, I would talk about the non-attainment levels for various pollutants in my neighborhood, but let's face it, when all the numbers are saying is that the air is not healthy to breathe. The thing about bad air is when you open the door you don't have an alternative to breathing.

So, it is a fact that we have bad air. More kids have asthma. People with breathing problems are told not to go outside on certain days. Sounds like we have a problem. What is the solution? I don't know. But as sure as I see the lines at the Holland Tunnel each morning, I know that the answer is not to build the Bergen Arches, another highway just two blocks from my house. More cars is not the answer.

I have heard that the problem is that the suburbanites want a better route to the jobs on the waterfront. They don't like to have to wait in traffic. I do have a solution to that. Give the waterfront jobs to the people who live in Hudson County. They are the ones who have subsidized all the developers through tax abatements. We are told at all these grand ground breakings how many jobs will be created. Well, give these created jobs to local people, and we won't have a problem, they can ride the new railroad to work. Then perhaps we can work on a solution to the air quality problems we know we have already, instead of making it worse by building the Bergen Arches.

Janice Monson