Air Pollution

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31017, 24 March 1966, Page 12

Air Pollution

Sir.—Action is what counts and there is as little action here as in Britain, where the bronchitis rate is five to 50 times that of equivalent industrial towns in Europe. Christchurch. with it s climate, has a pressing problem which will not wait 25 years without taking a ghastly toll in lives and health. Every housewife is an amateur stoker. In Berlin, Stockholm, Warsaw, Moscow, Hamburg and Bergen, smog is almost unknown in the density we experience: district heating schemes have been installed in many cities since about 1875. Result: more economical use of valuable fuel resources, better community health, and clean cities. Legislation is now imperative to regulate the wasteful and health-injurious burning of poor-grade high-sulphur fuel, indeed, all fuel, industrial or domestic. We are slowly being choked to death and turning our country into a stygian maze of belching incinerators.—Yours, etc., R. F. ESKELL. March 23, 1966.

Sir, —Mr Frank Neary is not quite correct when he states that it is not industry that creates smog. With each new industry that commences to produce, numbers of houses are built to accommodate the workers and numbers of buses are needed to transport them to work and cars to transport them at week-ends. The Government and city fathers should have learnt something from the experience of Los Angeles where atmospheric conditions are similar to those in Christchurch. There it is against the law to allow unlimited elements to leave car exhausts, and many other angles are approached in an effort to erradicate smog. Situated on a flax-swamp, Christchurch naturally is a foggy city and was not intended by Nature to become an industrial city. To continue this industrialisation is sentencing a proportion of citizens to an existence of bronchial misery.—Yours, etc., JOHN FORSTER. March 23, 1966.