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SCHOOL HEALTH
It was difficult to find a logical basis for selecting the areas to be suspended,
but it was finally decided to confine the suspension—from 8th December,
1970 to 31st March, 1971—to a single area of the borough, with a clear
boundary which could be recognised by all, i.e. the area South of a line
running from the borough boundary at Cat Hill, along Bramley Road, Slades
Hill, Windmill Hill, Church Street, and Southbury Road, and West of the
Great Cambridge Road, omitting No. 17 area in the extreme South-West of
the borough.
Approximately 85% of the area and 75% of the premises of the borough are
estimated to be already covered by smoke control orders. It is hoped that
coverage of the remainder of the borough will not be long delayed, as any
appreciable break in continuity will materially diminish the effect of past
publicity and lead to a deterioration in public relations.
Industrial Atmospheric
Pollution
The majority of furnaces in the borough are used for heating or steam raising,
and it is encouraging to see how little smoke is produced from this type
of plant.
Few hand-fired furnaces remain, and modern mechanical stokers can
operate to a high degree of efficiency, with minimum smoke emission. The
same can be said of oil-burning equipment, and the few cases of complaints
of excessive emission were found to be due to mechanical breakdown, and
in no case was it necessary to take formal action. There are, however, a
number of mechanically fired furnaces where wood waste is used as fuel,
sometimes with supplementary oil burners. These furnaces operate quite
well provided that a consistent feed of fuel is maintained, but considerable
smoke can be caused by hand-firing large pieces of waste wood, a practice
to be discouraged. The installation of hogging mills, although expensive
and apt to be noisy, will reduce the wood to chip size and allow it to be
burned satisfactorily. Efforts are being made to encourage firms to take
wood waste and other combustible material direct to the nearby refuse
destructor at Angel Road as an alternative to hand-firing and the use of
small incinerators on individual premises.
With the advent of North Sea gas a number of firms are installing furnaces
with burners designed to operate on either gas or oil, the oil to be used
only for short periods in winter during heavy demand on gas. If residual oil
with relatively high sulphur content is used even for these short periods,
quite The lighter distillate oil, although initially more expensive, has a low sulphur
content and can, therefore, be used with lower chimneys.
Section 3
Clean Air Act 1956
Section 6
Clean Air Act 1968
During the year the installation of thirty new furnaces was approved under
Section 3 of the Clean Air Act 1956. Eleven requests for approval of chimney
height under Section 6 of the Clean Air Act 1968 for furnaces exceeding
one-and-a-half million B.T.U.'s per hour were approved.
Alkali, Etc., Works
Regulation Act, 1906
A disturbing feature of air pollution in Enfield is the emission of smoke and
fumes from processes registered under the Alkali, etc., Works Regulation
Act 1906. In two cases the nuisance is aggravated by the fact that much
of the emission is at low level and affects a considerable number of premises.
Measurement of
Pollution
During the year measurement of pollution from smoke and sulphur dioxide
was continued in the Borough using nine standard volumetric instruments
at the same sites as during 1969. When a broad comparison is made covering
all instruments, no significant change from last year appears in the
general level of pollution; but the decline in the amount of sulphur dioxide
and smoke in the atmosphere over the last ten years has been quite dramatic
and it may be that pollution levels are now settling to a new normal level.
Significant reductions in these pollutants may be increasingly difficult to
effect, but continued efforts must be made in that direction.
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