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engines and gearboxes may possess carcinogens in varying amounts.
There is also the carbon monoxide problem. Clearly, much research
is needed here to confirm or dispel the danger. Body compartments
on vehicles should be completely air-tight sealed from the engine.
Air intake for heaters should not come from the engine compartment.
Car manufacturers should find no difficulty in making the air
intake from more suitable sites, and ducting even this air through
inexpensive air conditioners (filtered by activated charcoal). A
simple procedure on these lines would reduce the pollution burden
for drivers who have to work persistently in dense traffic in urban
areas.
However, all this does not help local residents and workers who
have the additional heavy burden of vehicle air pollution to cope
with. It is certain, with a vigorous programme of smoke control,
that the chimney pollution can be effectively reduced. Progress in
overcoming the pollution due to vehicles is at present virtually nil.
A walk during business hours along Borough High Street, Tooley
Street, Long Lane, Tower Bridge Road, Old Kent Road, or Jamaica
Road, reveals the extent of the daily pollution. Something must be
done either to reduce the exhaust fume and/or limit vehicles, and it
would seem that there is not much chance of either in the immediate
future. If ever a benefactor, whether State or private, is needed to
fully endow research to clear our roads of this scourge, it is needed
now. With hopes focused on the Los Angeles competition, should
a practical means be invented to eliminate vehicle fume it would take
some time to prove and increase its effectiveness. Then, if really
effective, it would take further time to tool up for new vehicles and
to fit the device to old vehicles.
I am certain that it will be possible to overcome all the difficulties
and find the answer but, in my opinion, the tempo of research has
been, and still is, far too slow.
Smoking
Finally, it will be clear from what has gone before that the hazards
of air pollution are many. But why add to them unnecessarily ?
In a debate as long ago as 1954 at the Royal Society of Health, on
smoking. I found it necessary to make the point that although
there are the intrinsic hazards of smoking cigarettes per se, nevertheless
there is still this further hazard which must be directly linked
to all I have said previously, namely the inhalation of polluted air
through the red hot ball of the cigarette tip. Here temperatures
reach 600° to 800 °C. and the pollutants mix, heat, activate, or
combine and react.
The opportunities of some of the 3,000 known chemicals (mentioned
before) are endless. It is known in industrial medicine that
lead poisoning can develop quickly by smoking in certain parts of a
lead factory. Similarly, smoking in various occupations where certain