Health and Polluted Air

The studies that were made in London and Donora left evidence that acute air pollution is a serious threat to health, particularly to the health of elderly people who have recently suffered from heart or lung ailments. While direct cause-and-effect relationship between contaminated air and disease has not been shown, nevertheless, there is strong evidence that air pollution is associated with a number of respiratory ailments. Among these are nonspecific infectious upper respiratory diseases ("the common cold"); chronic bronchitis; chronic constrictive ventilatory disease; pulmonary emphysema; bronchial asthma; and lung cancer.

Official U.S. Government Study: Summary

In September 1963 a study of air pollution in the United States was published as a staff report to the Committee on Public Works of the United States Senate. Highlights from the summary of this report give a clear picture of why our problem of air pollution is becoming more serious:

The rapid deterioration of the quality of our air has reached the point at which more effective control measures can no longer be postponed. To underline this point, research continues to provide new evidence that air pollution is objectionable, not only for its esthetic and nuisance effects, which we can see and smell, and its economic damages, which are more varied and costly than we had supposed, but also because of its hazards to health and safety.

Pollution is increasing faster than our population increases, because our rising standard of living results in greater consumption of energy and goods per person, and our production and transportation activities increase on both accounts.

It is quite evident that an aggressive program of research needs to be directed toward providing assistance in developing appropriate State and local air pollution control laws and standards. There is also a need for nationwide enforcement and standards, and in addition consideration needs to be given to the international aspect of air pollution."

An International Union of Air Pollution Associations was formed with United States leadership in June 1964.

Let's Clear the Air": A National Conference

A national conference on air pollution, under the title, "Let's Clear The Air," was held in Washington, D. C., in December 1962, under the auspices of the U. S. Public Health Service. It is worthwhile quoting some of the observations, reports, and remarks made on this occasion. In his concluding remarks, Luther L. Terry, then Surgeon General after Public Health Service, said

The filters in air-sampling devices throughout the country are still coming out black or gray. I am not discouraged, however, for we have reached agreement on a fundamental principle: that it is every man's right to breathe air which is not a hazard to his health or property and that this right must take precedence over a great number of lesser rights, real or imagined."

An interesting observation on the variety and complexity of the prjoblem was offered by S. Smith Griswold, control officer of the Air Pollution Control District of the County of Los Angeles, California (whom we have quoted before) as follows:

"We have found that few communities have the same total air pollution problem. In LOB Angeles 80% of our problem is motor vehicle emissions; 2047o comes from industry and other sources. In neighboring San Francisco, the problem is approximately 60 vehicular and 40% industrial. In LOB Angeles we burn no coal and relatively little fuel oil; in Pittsburgh coal burning was once the major source of air pollution. In Los Angeles our air is very stable; we have light winds and low inversions. In Chicago and Cleveland the winds are brisk and inversions rarely a problem.

"Despite the overall dissimilarity, the individual components of the problem are similar and the same correctives may be applied wherever those components are important. A steel furnace in Pittsburg can be controlled in the same manner as a similar one in LOS Angeles. A catalytic petroleum cracker in New Jersey can be controlled in the same degree as one in San Francisco."

In a layman's viewpoint on the national conference, Howard K. Smith, well-known radio and television news commentator touched on the political aspects. He quoted a telegram from the American Medical Asaociation which said in part: "Believing that air pollution can and should be controlled, the American Medical Association endorses the concept of local, State and Federal joint enterprise." Mr. Smith said he found "great stress on the idea that local government has the primary responsibility for air pollution control." But he asked:

when it comes to air pollution, what is local? An airplane pilot, on the first day of your sessions, talked of seeing the smudge from many cities blending together in a cloud which covered parts of several states. The wind bloweth where it listeth and our jurisdictional lines traced on the surface of the earth have little relevance.