With my 72nd birthday right around the corner, I was mortified to read a few weeks ago that, according to a formula used by the EPA (developed by John Graham, the White House regulatory czar), the monetary worth of someone over 70, is 37 percent less than a younger person, or $2.3 million vs. $3.7 million.

According to its opponents, the age-adjusted, cost-benefit analysis- referred to derisively as the "senior death discount"- is nothing but a ploy used by the Bush administration to reduce the estimated benefits of cleaning up the air, and for weakening the arguments for stricter regulations under the Clear Skies Act. "Fuzzy math," intended to justify give-aways to power plants and other industries, by allowing them to exceed the current emission levels, is how a lawyer with the Maryland Public Interest Research Group described it.

To contend that those in the "autumn of their life" aren't worth nearly as much, dollar-wise, as those who are still many birthdays away from reaching that season of their lives, is so ludicrous it's hardly worthy of comment. For how could one possibly draw a distinction as to what age a person's life is of more or less value, based on some magical formula concocted by a former Harvard professor (notice,I didn't say nutty) sequestered in the White House? And who would dare tell the the 13.2 percent of Americans ages 65 and older, who as of 2002 were either working or looking for work (up 50 percent since 1980), that they're "over the hill" and are no longer capable of being the productive citizens they once were? They'd give anyone a swift kick in the rear who inferred as much.

Now, I read somewhere that the average human breathes 700,000 cubic inches of air every day, regardless of how polluted it may be. And residing in Maryland, which has some of the worst air pollution in the nation, only exacerbates the health hazards. I can't recall a summer day this year or in recent years when the Air Quality Index published daily in the paper wasn't at the red, "Unhealthy" level, not to mention the "Very High" ultraviolet level. (And just think, before pollution people used to get airsick only on planes.)

And it's unlikely that grim picture will change in the immediate future, what with the energy task force led by Vice President Dick (I love bellowing smoke) Cheney constantly urging the EPA to alter its Interpretation of the Clean Air Act, so as to give some of the worst-polluting, coal-burning power plants more flexibility in getting around existing pollution limits. For shame!

But I tip my hat off to former EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman (no relation to the Whitman chocolates family), who perhaps had the most difficult and frustrating job in Washington, but who nevertheless did her best to clean up the environment, albeit mostly in vain. Why, even President Bush- undoubtedly with tongue in cheek- praised her after she resigned last month as "a dedicated and tireless fighter for new and innovative policies for cleaner air, purer water and better protected land." But I bet that Dick Cheney ignored his doctor's advice about not consuming alcohol and toasted a few drinks upon learning of her leaving.

While she told the president she was resigning to return home and spend more time with her family, me thinketh her sudden departure was precipitated by her announcing two weeks earlier that the EPA would stop the contentious practice of placing a lower value on the lives of people 70 or older (though it's not a done deal yet). And I loved her offhanded comment quoted in the Newsweek magazine, that "this is the kind of job when you come home at the end of the day, you'd really like to have someone to sound off to, and the plants just weren't doing it for me."

For what little consolation it may be for those living in today's polluted environment, you're a lot better off than if you'd lived in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with no sewers, no garbage collection, no fly sprays, no public toilets on the public square, and an awful lot of horses "dropping a load" as they pranced through the streets. And if you didn't have blocked nasal passages, the best you could do was to douse yourself heavily in perfume.