Pity the canary in the coal mine. A small, fragile non-volunteer, which breathes at a faster rate, is offered as sacrifice to alert miners that the air is dangerously contaminated.
Infants breathe three times the amount of air for their body weight as do adults. Our children are now our canaries.
Every time fuels are burned, whether in a power plant or an internal combustion engine, the poisonous chemicals and particles of the exhaust are spewed into the air around us. Like village excrement dumped into our surrounding moat, that waste does not just disappear, but collects in the surrounding air we all must breathe.