Recent letters to the editor have developed a valid point that soot is not just cruise related.

However, this is not the critically important issue. Soot is just a visible surrogate for what is not seen — something far more dangerous.

It is hard to argue with the point that we have lived with inevitable pollution associated with harbors and ships and that the air and water will never be clean.

The subtleties of the broader public health concern are that we have an ever increasing exposure to many toxic elements in our environment. Since the body can handle only so much coming from numerous directions, it is logical to start where simple interventions can have the greatest impact.

Our estuaries are filters, our urban and maritime forests are filters and if we spread fumes around by not concentrating sources of pollution, our atmosphere can accommodate a certain amount of junk. We should focus on regional high concentrations of pollution when they impact concentrations of people over extended periods of time.

Other letters to the editor turn to the “not in my backyard” argument against relocation of the new cruise terminal. We must not spare one neighborhood to adversely impact another, so science is needed before any decisions are made on larger, more costly preventions than shoreside power.

Grants and donations are being sought by a group of physicians who wish to monitor areas known to have high diesel exhaust effects and correlate that with data from health surveillance of respiratory diseases and premature death.

The study cannot run long enough to look at cancer, stroke, heart disease, etc. and cannot measure all the toxins associated with exhaust. But we can try to answer the question of where should we focus clean air efforts.

In the meantime it is only logical to demand shoreside power and methods to control all fuel-burning traffic where dense populations live and work and breathe.

Rick Reed, M.D.
Lenwood Boulevard
Charleston

(Also published in P&C.)