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The most serious aspect of the problem is the effect of detergents on
sewage works and the disposal of effluents, and it is considered that further
research is called for before any single method can be recommended for use.
Meanwhile foaming is not considered to be sufficiently serious to justify
public alarm, although it may become more troublesome if detergents of the
present type should become increasingly used.
The Committee sum up in these words:—
"Available evidence about the effects of the growing use of synthetic
detergents does not justify any immediate alarm in users or in the public health
services. There is definitely nuisance at some sewage works however, and there
are other and more serious possibilities in relation to the efficiency of sewage
treatment, the condition of rivers, and the purity of water supplies. All these
matters require and will receive most careful examination."
THE AIR WE BREATHE
(Report by the Medical Officer of Health—November.)
Of the three absolute necessities of life—Food, Water and Air—
measures for safeguarding the purity and preventing the contamination of
food and water are so far in advance of those applied to the air we breathe
that the pollution of the atmosphere may be regarded as the almost unchecked
environmental evil of our age. It required the five-day fog of December,
1952, which resulted in the death of over 4,000 people, to awaken the public
conscience to the seriousness of the air pollution which has been comparatively
neglected for generations.
The Disastrous Fog of December, 1952.
During a period of five days—from 5th to 9th December, 1952—the Greater
London area was enveloped in the thickest smoke-laden fog within living memory.
In February, 1953 I submitted to the Public Health Committee a special
report entitled' Fog and 'Flu—Some Facts and Figures', and in the following
month some additional statistical and graphical information in the form of a
second special report entitled' The Winter of 1952-53', from which the following
is a quotation.
'The man-made fog of three months ago was no new phenomenon; nor can
it be regarded as a pestilence caused by an agent against which we have no defence.
It is merely a repetition of what the medical officers of health of Manchester,
Glasgow and other large industrial cities have been reporting for generations;
and is the well-known result of certain well-defined meteorological conditions
in an area where the atmosphere becomes overloaded with poisonous products of
combustion to such an extent that the human air passages are irritated until
death or acute disability overtakes those least able to withstand such irritation.
'Man-made fog is in effect an epidemic illness whose cause is known.
It is therefore preventable, and should be prevented. Can it be that we are now
more pre-occupied with the cure of disease rather than with its prevention?
'These terrible fogs have a way of recurring all too frequently, and it would
be well if the disastrous nature of the most recent one should lead to further
investigation into all causes and effects.
'It is to be hoped that local sanitary authorities and the appropriate
central Government departments will devote more of their time and money to
smoke abatement by encouraging the replacement of obsolete industrial plant,
by providing some incentive to help in the elimination of smoke from domestic
sources, and by taking steps to reduce the gross pollution from industries such
as railways, gas works and electricity generating stations. Meanwhile town
dwellers are languishing for want of the health-giving rays of the sun that cannot
penetrate the overhanging pall of smoke, housewives are burdened with the
frequent washing and cleaning of curtains and other fabrics, and their houses and
public buildings are being defaced and destroyed by the corrosive action of
atmospheric pollution. '