Remember when atmospheric contaminants were romantically called stardust?

The line hinges on a contrast between poetic naming and scientific/industrial reality. By calling “atmospheric contaminants” “stardust,” the speaker evokes an older, romantic habit of interpreting what falls from the sky as wondrous and cosmic rather than hazardous. The rhetorical question implies a loss of innocence: modern awareness reframes airborne particulates as pollution, not magic. It also critiques how language can soften or disguise unpleasant truths—suggesting that what we choose to call something shapes our emotional response and even our tolerance of it. The quote’s nostalgia is therefore double-edged: it mourns enchantment while exposing how enchantment can be a euphemism.