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108
In the London County Council (General Powers) Bill, now before
Parliament, in Part IV. an endeavour is made to take out the word
"black" in regard to smoke, in Section 24, Sub-section (b) of the Public
Health (London) Act, 1891.
I am strongly of opinion that on health grounds the provisions
proposed should become law.
In recent years for house purposes, such as heating and cooking,
gas has replaced, to a large extent, coal fires, and, in that respect, there
must have been less smoke produced and less emitted from private
chimneys.
I also think that upon the whole there has been some improvement
in regard to smoke issuing from the chimneys of manufactories and
other works. There is, however, at the present time a large amount of
smoke given off which, under good management and the use of better
materials, might be in a large measure avoided.
The smoke does a great damage to health, chiefly by obscuring
sunlight and allowing lower organisms to grow. It also increases in
severity, if it does not originate, lung diseases.
Many of the manufactories in Southwark, which years ago were
such great offenders in the way of smoke have, by the re-arrangement of
their furnaces and the adoption of an almost smokeless coal, ceased to
give off smoke except in small quantities.
Unfortunately, there are still many manufactories and works which
on account of expense, use an inferior coal, and so go on day by day
darkening the atmosphere with volumes of smoke.
The smoke nuisance in Southwark is remediable. It is simply a
question of expense and care in the way of supervision. This has been
proved over and over again, for where firms have been threatened with
prosecution they have used a better coal and have exercised better
supervision, with the result that there has been no further cause of
complaint.
The great difficulty in regard to prosecutions has been the definition
of "black smoke." It is rarely, if ever, that a volume of smoke however
dark and dense it may be issuing from a chimney shaft can have
the word "black" correctly applied to it. We have tried to get over