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1927
9
For economic reasons, the tenants of some of the houses
are willing to sublet, even when the accommodation is not
satisfactory. To this extent the difficulties of the housing question
is peculiar to Acton. Otherwise the problem of housing is very
similar in most districts in and around London. The supply is
insufficient to allow of any free interchange of houses. Usually
the requests for more housing accommodation come from the
employees. But the employers are also handicapped. It is not
an infrequent event for a firm to lose a good worker because the
latter cannot find a house near his work and he finds travelling
to his work too arduous and onorous.
SMOKE PREVENTION.
On July 1st, 1927, the new Smoke Prevention Act came
into force. As far as densely populated industrial areas are
concerned, atmospheric pollution constitutes an outstanding
problem of sanitation which health authorities can no longer
ignore. At first it seems curious that the necessity of a clean
atmosphere has taken such a long time to be appreciated. The
benefits of clean food and clean water were early appreciated and
we have made considerable progress towards the attainment of
these two goals.
The provision of uncontaminated water supplies has wiped
out of existence the cholera scourges which were frequent in the
earlier part of the nineteenth century. It seems almost incredible
now that as late as the middle of last century in a town with a
much smaller population than Acton fifteen hundred deaths
occurred from cholera in the autumn of one year.
The provision of pure food supplies has undoubtedly caused
the great diminution of mortality from diarrhoea and other
diseases of the intestines. Medical research had shown that
certain diseases were directly due to contamination of the water
and food supplies and the steps undertaken to protect them were
successful in reducing the mortality from those diseases. But
until quite recently, no diseases could be said to be directly due
to a polluted atmosphere, and even now, it is not easy to provide
direct and absolute proof that the death-rate in any area is
influenced by the smoke pall.
It is impossible, in the majority of cases, to point with
any certainty to specific cases of disease or mortality as due to
this cause. We know, of course, that during a spell of foggyweather
the deaths from lung diseases and the deaths of old
people rapidlv increase in number.
Dr. Osborne, the Medical Officer of Health for Silford,
tabulated the deaths of certain towns and he found that the