What is Easy Breathers?

Easy Breathers is not a cheesy public service message. Real students worked in front of and behind the camera to show you some cool vehicle technologies and seriously disgusting air pollution problems. It all started in fall 2000, when a group of high school students, teachers, and a professional video crew got together to produce a video on air pollution issues for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

It took over a year - we coughed our way through Houston traffic, glided silently through San Jose on an electric train, and sweated in the Milwaukee heat during our summer vacation - all for you. The result: a slammin' video with a great soundtrack, a pretty good story plot, and great actors (of course!); and a Web site that will help you in life and school. So check it out, already.

To learn more about the people behind the scenes and screens of Easy Breathers, check out The Making of Easy Breathers.

Why should you care about these issues?

Pollution emissions from transportation are a major ingredient in global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, asthma, ground-level ozone (a.k.a., smog) formation and other problems. We're responsible for these emissions. The way we choose to get around today impacts our world tomorrow - the land, the water, and the AIR.

Did you know� ?

• Twenty million Americans have asthma. Five million are children, and the numbers are on the rise. Most of those people are African American or Hispanic.
• Gas-powered cars produce chemicals that, in hot, humid weather, react with others to form ground-level ozone. Ground-level ozone is an asthma trigger and pollutant that harms even healthy lungs.
• Vehicle travel in the United States is doubling every 20 years.
• A vehicle powered by gasoline emits its own weight in greenhouse gases every year.
• Chemicals from leaking vehicle air conditioners deplete the Earth's stratospheric ozone layer, causing higher rates of skin cancer and cataracts.

It's not too late... by making good transportation choices, you can have a significant positive impact on environmental problems. Good transportation choices include:

• Walking, busing, biking, or carpooling to school or work one or more times a week.
• Choosing a fuel-efficient vehicle (>27 mpg).
• Keeping your car in good running condition.
• Supporting new transportation technologies like alternative fuels, hybrid cars, electric cars, and fuel cells.

How to use this site

Easy Breathers is not just a Web site - it's a way of life. It's about choices - about understanding that how you get from place to place directly affects the environment, this "matrix we all live on." Easy Breathers shows that the choices we make today affect our world tomorrow.

But in order to make good choices, you've gotta know what your options are. That's where the video and Web site come in. The video investigates the causes and impacts of air pollution, and introduces some amazing new - and old - technologies (like electric cars, fuel cells, and biofuels) that can help solve these problems.

This Web site helps to back up the video with information on the technologies and ideas you'll hear about when you watch the video. It also gives you an opportunity to get involved.

Whether you're doing a report or paper for a class, trying to understand how your car works, interested in environmental issues, or just looking for fun, EB has something for you. You don't need to have seen the video in order to understand the stuff you'll find on this site, but it does provide a good introduction.

If you're a student and you've seen the video, a good place to start is Get a Clue. Get a Clue is the game described at the end of the video where you have to find clues hidden in various scenes. Then, from there you can go on to:

• The Library, to do some reading or research on these issues,
• Open Mic to join or start a discussion,
• Speak UP! to post your writing, art, or photography,
• The Lab to download an experiment or post your results.
• The Rec Room to play more games, or
• The Making Of Easy Breathers to see how this all came together.

If you're a student and you haven't seen the video, you might want to begin in either The Library or The Rec Room and then move on to the other sections (described above) from there.

If you're a teacher or educator, go to the teacher section for ideas and resources on how to integrate Easy Breathers into your curriculum.

Don't forget to tell us what you think of Easy Breathers!