The Number One Complaint

Every morning, I walk out of my apartment building and the first thing I do (if it's not too dark) is check the visibility. Most mornings, it's low meaning that I am about to begin my two-mile walk to school breathing toxic air and I usually mumble a few grumblings.
I now have two options:
1. I can just suck it up - literally, hoping that it doesn't affect my asthma or give me a sore throat before I get to school.

This was taken last winter -
I didn't even bother to
wear make up that day.
Just about everywhere
you see white is frost -
made from moisture from my breath -
it goes everywhere.

2. Wear my mask. The obvious choice is a mask right? But I hate wearing it because I can't walk too fast with it as I'm breathing in most of my carbon dioxide unless I'm breathing normally. It's also messy - the moisture from my breath collects in the mask so by the time I reach school, my makeup around my nose and mouth is gone, my face is wet under the mask, and everywhere that my breath escaped from the mask is frosty, including my eyelashes/mascara. This means that by the time I reach school, my makeup is ruined, my face is either wet or frozen, my skin will break out eventually, and my mask is soaked with spit and snot and makeup.
I'm not exaggerating but am writing this to be a little humorous because in the end, it's a small price to pay to make sure that most of the toxins in the air aren't reaching my lungs.

To give you more of an idea about what it's like here, read this article Life in a Toxic City. It's a little long but the first several paragraphs are interesting I think.

Every now and then, I'll ask my students what they would change about Ulan Bator and almost always, the first thing they say is the pollution. Hopefully, they will continue the work that is being done and eventually, UB won't be one of the most polluted cities on Earth.