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consumption must have been trapped below the inversion layer which
is reported to have been some three hundred feet above ground level.
Certainly no domestic flue gases would have penetrated this layer, and
few, if any, of the local industrial chimneys can have been high enough
to have had much better effect.
In the week ending 8th December, the highest reading of atmospheric
smoke was approximately eleven times greater, and sulphur
dioxide seven-and-a-half times greater than the average for the month.
The full effect of this on the health of the community is not reducible
to statistics but it may be observed that in the week following the fog
the deaths in which bronchitis was a factor suffered a threefold
increase.
3. THE PETROLEUM REGULATION ACTS.
(1) With the co-operation of the Borough Engineer and Surveyor,
plans deposited for planning consent or approval under the
building byelaws, which show that car parking spaces are to be
provided in a building, are examined in this Department. A licence
is necessary when there is likely to be an aggregate of more than
sixty gallons of petroleum-spirit kept in the fuel tanks of motor
vehicles, and in granting a licence the Council imposes the conditions
recommended by the Home Office. Where less than sixty gallons
is to be kept in this manner the premises must comply with conditions
set out in the Petroleum-Spirit (Motor Vehicles, etc.) Regulations,
1929.
During the year there were examined three proposals which came
within the scope of the Regulations and six to which licensing conditions
were applicable. In each case revision of the plans was
necessary in order to meet the standard requirements but none of the
buildings had been completed by the end of 1962.
With the shortage of land in the Borough, and the imposition
of town planning requirements as to the provision of car parking
spaces for new buildings, it may be anticipated that the control of
garages incorporated in buildings will occupy more and more of the
attention of the Department.
(2) Ullage tests on 32 underground petrol tanks over twenty
years old, and totalling 18,700 gallons capacity, were made, and one
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