ENVIRONMENT POLLUTION IS A PROBLEM ALL ROUND THE WORLD

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32266, 8 April 1970, Page 14

ENVIRONMENT POLLUTION IS A PROBLEM ALL ROUND THE WORLD

(By

PAT SMITH,

Newsweek Feature Service)

Americans are not alone in worrying about pollution. The ecology crusade is gathering strength wherever man has proliferated—and profited at the expense of his environment. But in most of the countries of the world, the change in the climate of opinion may have come too late to save the climate itself.

In Western Europe, factory filth, car exhaust and riverborne sewage blight every population centre and move across every border. Lately, for example, a drought in West Germany has dangerously lowered the Rhine, making it even filthier than it usually is, and ’in the process menacing the source from which the downstream Dutch get one-third of their drinking water. In the Communist countries, the long, single-minded emphasis on industriallsation-at-any-cost has smogged city after city. Air pollution in once-beautiful Prague is so dense that dusk seems to fall shortly after noon, and a single industrial complex, less than a mile from the centre of the city, spews hundreds of tons of fall-out on the residents every day. The Most Polluted

In the Far East, Tokyo retains its title as the world's most polluted metropolis. The country itself is not far behind. Fully 90 per cent of Japanese households dump their garbage directly into one or another of the national waterways. The "underdeveloped” countries are making their own sort of backward ecological progress. In Africa, infant industries are polluting as they grow. Latin America has its troubles, too. The air in Mexico City contains more carbon monoxide than that in New York City and more industrial sulphurous fall-out than that in London.

Belatedly, national leaders are facing up to the problems. But the force of the response varies, and environment control is still an alsoran on most national priority lists.

“Increasing personal income and consumption mean nothing if a human being’s surroundings aren’t made better,” says Serge Oniine, a prominent French government environmentalist. Significantly, Oniine speaks more hopefully of the work to be done in the future than of the programmes going on right now. “We are going to deal with all the environmental problems together,” he says, “attacking them all at the same time.”

France itself has lately mounted one of the better anti-pollution campaigns. The waterways are the main problem, and there are centuries of neglect to be made up for. Seventy years ago, fishermen on the Parisian quays regularly took 50 species of fish from the Seine River; now they are lucky if they land one of the few hardy eels that remain as the only form of fish life in the polluted waters. Also, the government is at last looking ahead. On the plannning board is Le Vaudreuil—a community of 80,000 living in an area designed never to have an environmental problem. The Rhine Scrubbed

The West Germans, too, have gone into the anti-pollu-tion business. The Rhine has already undergone a preliminary scrubbing—by a series of 175 newly installed purification plants. This is part of a massive water-rejuvenation programme begun two years ago. Stringent new laws governing industrial pollution have also gone into effect. But in most of Europe, the

hard disciplines of environmental control have yet to be faced. The Italians, for example, have instituted only a mild form of anti-pollution legislation despite the visible evidence that some of the world’s most treasured art works, especially in Florence and Milan, are being eaten away by toxic fumes in the atmosphere. As for the Russians—their environmentalists are barely into the propaganda stage, though it is a measure of progress that the government at least allows itself to be attacked for its disregard of industrial pollution. AU the major waterways have long been polluted. A recent Soviet cartoon shows the legendary Volga Boatman daintily shrinking back from the noxious stream.

Lately, a long-standing but not much publicised debate between conservationists and factory managers has been escalated by the popularity of a movie called “At the Lake.” The story line centres on Baikal, the world’s deepest fresh-water lake and for the past dozen years the scene of an expanding wood-pulp industrial complex. Interestingly, the hero loses his struggle to force anti-pollu-tion measures on the factory —but goes off into the sunset, determined to fight again. Against Heavy Odds A few Japanese conservationists are also fighting—against infinitely greater odds. Their country is far more heavily industrialised and governmental deference to the great business combines is traditional.

“Japan was very late in doing anything about water pollution,” admits Michio Hashimoto, chief of the country’s environmetal pollution control programme. Even the ocean beaches near Japan are polluted. On one day last August, the pollution count was nearly 20 times higher than the level biologists consider safe for bathing. "It is conceivable,” says Hashimoto, “that in the more remote mountain areas, you might find an unpolluted river.” Air pollution in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto has to be breathed to be believed. Here, at least, the authorities have

finally begun to try. City officials have installed a SUS 2.7 million computerised air contamination control centre. The new system measures the pollution count electronically and, when the count goes too high, signals 78 major factories to switch to a iess sulphurous—and more expensive —fuel.

Beyond the computer, however, there isn’t much to be said for the Tokyo clean-up campaign. No plans exist to curtail the billowing black clouds of smoke from hundreds of smaller factories. Nor is there any limit in sight on the number of cars in a city that has seen its auto population rise frqm 300,000 to 2,000,000 since World War 11. Mexico City’s Problems The car is the culprit in Mexico City, too—along with the extremely cheap grade of gasoline commonly used. Geography also plays its part. The city is walled in by mountains, and there are no winds to flush out the air. Indeed, the area is a natural vacuum-cleaner bag in which the winds merely shift the daily output of 600 tons of pollution. Again, nothing serious is being done about the situation. “So long as we have all these vehicles in this enclosed space,’’ says one official, “the problem will persist —and worsen.” So it goes, all over the world. The people are becoming aware—but the damage has been done. Perhaps the crusade has come too late, at least in individual countries.

A global attack may be the only solution. Acting on this premise, the National Academy of Sciences recently came up with the most ambitious environment project conceived thus far: a worldwide network of 20 stations that would measure and record all ecological developments that could prove harmful to man. “It's clear that the nations are too small to handle the environment by themselves,” said the French delegate to a recent ecological conference in Strasbourg. “The problem is bigger than any of us.”