Good news on the clean air front.

[ski diva]

I'm always interested in any improvement that can be made in our air quality -- actually, in anything that combats global warming and makes our world a better place. So I found this particularly encouraging (from the NOAA web site):

A major smog-forming pollutant is declining over the eastern United States, according to a new study by scientists at NOAA and the University of Bremen, Germany. New satellite observations mark the first time space-based instruments have detected the regional impact of pollution controls implemented by coal-burning electric power plants in the 1990s. The findings were published this month in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. High-precision instruments aboard European satellites have detected a 38 percent decline in nitrogen dioxide in the Ohio River Valley and nearby states between 1999 and 2005, according to the study. Nitrogen dioxide and nitric oxide are two gases that form a group of pollutants known as nitrogen oxides, which are created primarily through fossil fuel burning. When combined with other gases and sunlight, they form ozone, the major urban air pollutant in smog.