Organizing for effective air pollution control

✍ Scribed by Edward R. Weidlein

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1957
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 654 KB
• Volume: 263
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-0032
• DOI: 10.1016/0016-0032(57)90744-5

✦ Synopsis

Cleaner Air Week is now being observed nationally and has won the endorsement of civic, governmental and industrial leaders throughout the nation. People are becoming seriously interested in the air they breathe. It is timely that greater emphasis should be placed on the occasion of the seventh annual observance of "Cleaner Air Week," and that the sponsor of this drive is the Air Pollution Control Association. It is an educational program to bring home the fact that every element of community life adds pollution to the atmosphere. This includes the home owner burning refuse or making faulty use of fuels or combustion equipment, the motor vehicle with its exhaust, the factory with its furnaces or chemical processes and a great many other activities which emit dust or tiny particles of solid matter. I just recently visited a small town in Kansas, 6000 population, that is enforcing an air pollution control program, which outlaws all backyard incinerators, burning of waste and has installed a garbage and waste collection system. Here is a community that is not bothered with air inversions or congested traffic and usually has plenty of wind to blow away the fumes but still realizes that air can become contaminated if not carefully guarded.

It is likewise important that everyone in the community knows the tremendous amount of work already accomplished through research and the application of controls. Air pollution control is being made more effective through industry committees organized by APCA, whereby all the knowledge gained in any particular industry, such as steel, oil, chemical or heating equipment, can be pooled for the benefit of the industry as a whole. The team approach is stressed by APCA. Labor * Talk given during Cleaner Air Week in Philadelphia, Pa.