While smoked bacon might be No. 1 on your list of favorite all-time foods/friends in the entire world, one city in China has had it up to here with oderiferous waves of pork smell wafting into the air. Officials there are blaming residents’ love of homemade smoked bacon on “severe air pollution.” More like, “severe belly delight,” am I right?
Regardless of its tastiness, officials in Dazhou, which is in the Sichuan province famed for its cuisine, say bacon is “the criminal culprit” that’s polluting the air, reports MarketWatch’s Laura He.
The heavy air pollution has been afflicting the town since earlier this month, says the provincial environmental monitoring center, and it’s due to residents smoking their own bacon. Which means they live in bacon-scented homes. Mmm.
Anyway, the bacon blame is laid out in a report by the state-run China News Agency, which says Dazhou isn’t the only place where the tradition of smoking bacon is prompting a climb in a pollutant called PM 2.5, which is made up of tiny particles that can muck up the lungs, among other issues.
But in Chongqing, where this is also cited as a problem for the environment, the head of a social-service agency is quoted is saying that while bacon smoke can affect the air, it’s unlikely there would be any “substantial impact.”
On the other hand, not smoking bacon would mean not having smoked bacon. So, there’s that.
Chinese city says pollution all due to … bacon [MarketWatch]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist