On 2008-04-10, Jay Maynard wrote:
I lived in Houston well past my 40th birthday. I learned to fly out of
Ellington Field, and flew back and forth to Galveston to practice. I didn't
notice any of this.

You must be quite unobservant. The Ellington field area is quite near
refineryland. From Houston Gulf, where I was based (until it closed
down), on a clear day looking north over Clear Lake, the air quite
obviously had a green tinge (more so if there was a temperature
inversion). The smell is very strong if you drive up to La Porte
airport past the refineries themselves. Looking south to Texas City, you
could often see a greenish haze there too, although not as dense as the
La Porte/Belaire/Baytown area. Our aircraft had a nice clean paint job
and lots of polished surfaces, the film of light brown gunk on all the
leading edges soon became noticable.

If you couldn't smell the outer marker when approaching Galveston then
you've no sense of smell or were remarkably unobservant. In League City
where I lived, when the wind was out of the north the smell of
petrochemicals was very noticable, and nearly everyone commented about
the smelly air.

Whenever I go to Houston now, the smell when you leave the terminal at
IAH is noticable, even though that's some distance away from the
main refinery areas. I never used to notice it that far out when I
actually lived there, probably because that's just how the air was and I
didn't really notice it any more.

--
From the sunny Isle of Man.
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.