Word: azcapotzalco
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Last week the worsening conditions prompted Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to step up his antipollution campaign by shutting down the giant oil refinery at Azcapotzalco in northwestern Mexico City. In operation since 1933, the facility had provided 34% of the city's gasoline and 85% of its diesel fuel. But it also spewed as much as 88,000 tons of contaminants into the atmosphere each year and was responsible for up to 7% of the city's industrial air pollution...
...creation of a lethal inversion that remains fixed for days -- like the one that killed 20 people in the smokestack town of Donora, Pa., in 1948 or the killer fog that claimed the lives of 4,000 people in London in 1952. Even with the closure of the Azcapotzalco refinery, both Mexico's government and its industry will have to work harder at controlling pollution for years to come before the people of Mexico City can breathe easier...
There are 30 other big gas plants in and around Mexico City, the world's largest metropolis (pop. 18 million). One facility frequently cited as a potential "time bomb" is a refinery at Azcapotzalco, in the northern part of the city, that was built in 1959. At the time, few people lived in the area; now the neighborhood is as crowded as the rest of Mexico City. Says one worried housewife: "If there were an accident, we would be talking of thousands of lives lost, not hundreds." In the aftermath of the San Juan Ixhuatepec disaster, there have been...
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