Air pollution makes runner Harlan sick

Here’s the story, from the ongoing federal trail NC vs. TVA:

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Will Harlan started on a “fun” run to promote clean air in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park one July day a few years ago, and it largely ended his competitive running career.

He blames pollution — to which TVA’s coal-burning plants are a major contributor — for what happened to him.

About halfway into his 72-mile run along the Appalachian Trail, he began to have chest pains and difficulty breathing.

“I was unable to inhale deeply. I didn’t really know what was going on,” said Harlan, a former teacher and executive editor of Blue Ridge Outdoors magazine.

He said he had run races requiring a fast pace that were longer distances with no such problems. As a professional ultra-runner, he had proposed this more casual run for the local clean-air group he’s associated with, called The Canary Coalition. It got a permit for the event that he dubbed “the Great Smoky’s end-to-end run.”

He was testifying Thursday on behalf of the state of North Carolina, which is suing TVA in federal court to try to force the agency to reduce its emissions by 2013, in line with what is required of plants within that state.

“I was feeling horrible,” said Harlan. “Things only got worse.”

He couldn’t turn around at that point — darkness was closing in, and his wife, a family physician, had walked in five miles to await him at the next stop.

The pain in his lungs had grown so severe and his breathing so labored that he was walking and stopping every 100 yards, he said.