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There was one thought that air pollution affected only the area immediately around large citieswith factories and heavy automobile traffic. At present, we realize that although these are the areas with the worst air pollution, the problem is literally worldwide. ( 76 ) On several occasions over the past decade, a heavy cloud of air pollution has covered the east of the United States and brought health warnings in rural areas away from any major concentration of manufacturing and automobile traffic. In fact, the very climate of the entire earth may be infected by air pollution. Some scien-tists consider that the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the air resulting from the burning of fossil fuels (coal and oil) is creating a "greenhouse effect"--conserving heat reflected from the earth and raising the world' s average temperature. If this view is correct and the world' s tempera- ture is raised only a few degrees, much of the polar ice cap will melt and cities such as New York,Boston, Miami, and New Orleans will be in water.

(77) Another view, less widely held, is that increasing particular matter in the atmosphere is blocking sunlight and lowering the earth' s temperature--a result that would be equally disastrous.