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11
clean, but in London during the day at the height of
traffic the air we breathe is and can be seen as a cloud
of scarcely impalpable composition, this mainly arises
from the condition of the surface of the roads and streets,
and is injurious not only by displacement of pure air by
foreign matters, but is an ever-present means for the
conveyance of poisonous substances, and maybe specific
germs of disease into the system through the lungs, and
by infecting food and drink. The only means we at
present know of to mitigate these evils is by the most
efficient method of road cleansing, this means increased
cost and increased rates; yet if we could reconcile our
views of present cost to the ultimate good results sure
to be attained, the first cost would be the true economy,
not only in the saving of health and life, but from the
utilitarian aspect of preservation of property, as in the
cases of clothes and furniture, which it is well known
are destroyed by the dust and other impurities suspended
in the air. Atmospheric pollution is derived from many
other sources, over some of which we have little or no
control, but this fact makes it more imperative that we
should suppress as far as possible those sources over
which we have control. We cannot prevent the pollutions
arising from respiration and the exhalations
generally from living beings, but we can prevent or
mitigate those arising from detrition of the surface of
roads and streets, from sewer gases, dust and refuse
accumulations, &c.
Pure air is the first essential to health, and I have
been induced to make these general remarks, not because
local authorities pay less attention to the removal
of the causes which affect its purity, but because I think
much more might be done, and that with every regard to
ultimate economy; the enormously increased traffic and
population of the metropolis necessarily produces a corresponding
increase in the surface filth and refuse of
the roads ; much of this becomes sufficiently impalpable