"Border patrol wouldn't give us the truck because it had bullet holes in it", he said, adding that other delays came because of tsunamis, hailstorms, factories burning down, sinking ships and earthquakes.
"If Walmart and Gap want to stand alongside collapsing factories and burning factories and women jumping out of buildings, I guess that's their choice.
In addition to being exposed to factory emissions, burning fields and car exhaust, the homeless and those who live in the slums often light fires to cook or keep warm, sometimes burning plastic or rubber such as discarded tires, the fumes of which are highly toxic.
And the factories were burning everything, and letting off smoke from chemicals and poisons.
Five of Nippon Steel's 10 factories are burning used tyres and recyclable plastics such as discarded shopping bags and bottles as well as coal.
"If these industries and factories stop burning petrol and sending poison into the atmosphere will it bring our rains back?" I had to tell her I did not know.
In built-up areas, the smog put a lid on the daily outpourings of car exhausts, factory smoke and burning rubbish, and created an eye-stinging, throat-burning atmosphere that made going out a burden.
A woman on a road in Texas on Wednesday, in the town of West, near Waco, was driving away from a factory that was burning when she heard a sound like thunder: "It was like being in a tornado," she told the A.P.. "It blew out my windshield".
A furious blaze fueled by thousands of pounds of wax swept through a candle factory this afternoon, burning the block-square brick building to the ground, sending workers running for their lives and chasing nearby families from their homes on the coldest day of the year.
