Ladies and gentlemen, 

Thank you for allowing me to address this panel. Today I'd 

like to 

speak to you not about a gas driller in Dallas, Texas, but 

about John Glenn the astronaut. 

Upon his return from space Mr. Glenn explained that one 

thing that 

truly shocked and amazed and impressed him more than 

any other 

thing from his flight was how very tiny and thin the layer of 

air is that 

surrounds our the earth. A layer merely thousands of feet 

highadjacent to the vast infinity we call space. 

He gave an analogy in which he stated that if the diameter of 

the earth was the height of his body, the layer of air around it 

would be about this thick: Just a few millimeters. Think 

about it. 

How precious this wonderful life-giving layer of air is! 

Beyond it-there's nothing but the vacuum of endless space. 

Ladies and gentlemen, OUR little layer of air is being 

abused; it has no voice; and so I am here to speak for it. 
By trade, just up until last year, I was for the past twenty-five 

years a traveling 

saleswoman throughout the state of Texas. I wholesaled 

optical 

frames that I carried in large, heavy sales rep bags. 

Because my home office in New York only paid me $50 per 

night for 

hotels, I tried to look for inexpensive Motel 6 type of places 

and I'd always ask 

for a a room on the first floor that opened into parking lot. 

This way I could 

carry my sales rep bags in with little difficulty. 

On two different occasions within the last several yearsonce In 

Houston and once in Odessa, Texas, I was awakened in the 

wee hours of the night by noxious, toxic gas fumes. 

Evidently, in Houston a refinery was dumping poison into 

the air about 4 or 5 a.m 

These fumes were so strong they woke me up-and I'm a 

pretty sound sleeper. 
A few years ago, I was in a motel along 1-20 in Odessa. I 

remember waking up around 3 or 4 in the morning because I 

sensed my eyes were burning. 

When I opened them they were really smarting-and there 

was a horrible strong gas smell in the room. You could 

literally almost feel the particulants in 

the air. It was sort of like a barely visible foggy vapor. 

assumed my room had a faulty air conditioner spewing 

poisonous fumes and so ran to open the door to let in fresh 

a1r. 

But when I opened my door it was much worse! It was the 

outside air! So I quickly closed my door and looked around 

in horror. My eyes were still really burning badly and I was 

having difficulty inhaling; I jumped to the phone and called 

the 

front desk, but there was no answer. So, alone and afraid in 

an attempt to not breathe it directly in, I simply got under the 

covers and used the sheets and blankets as a face mask. 

I lay in bed thinking that this must have been what the gas 

chambers were like in Nazi Germany. It was a totally surreal 

experience! Of course, there was no getting back to sleep at 

all. 

Talk about fumes-1 was fuming mad. For some reason the 

EPA didn't come to my mind. Instead, I lay there lamenting 

the fact that all I had between me and these noxious fumes 

was Governor Perry. 
But knowing how he favors big business over the rest of us, 

I figured why even bother to call his office, what's the use? 

In the morning the front desk lady told me that there was a 

tire plant up the street that it was the source of the problem. 

People who have homes with bedrooms that don't open up 

into the parking lot probably don't notice the poison fumes 

when they're sleeping in the middle of the night--they 

probably have better insulation or windows and doors. 

But my eyes and lungs knew it that night! And they are here 

to testify to it. It happened-and it happens routinely while 

we ALL sleep. 

It doesn't matter whether it's a refinery, a tire plant or a 

cement plant. Any business that abuses 

our thin little layer of air around our planet needs to be 

stopped. Of course the people working in 

them have jobs and families that rely on these plants-but 

science needs to be applied so that jobs 

will be plentiful, and our air will not be under assault by 

pollutants. Until these business can 

solidly prove that they are part of the solution and the not the 

problem, I say they need to be intensely monitoredespecially late at night-by watchdogs from the EPA. 
Let your conscience be your guide. Let the EPA do its job 

without interference and support them to the fullest. 

Do it for the people of Dallas. 

Do it for the people of Odessa and Houston for that matter. 

Do it so no other sales rep has to hide under their covers 

choking in an attempt to try to breathe. 

But most of all, do it for yours and mine and Astronaut John 

Glenn's miraculous, incredible, life-sustaining little tiny layer 

of vulnerable air surrounding planet earth. 

Thank you. 

. 

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