SAFEGUARD TO HEALTH

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 94, 22 April 1933, Page 15

SAFEGUARD TO HEALTH

City 'workers who travel backwards and forwards from the suburbs are subjected to the devitalising effects of vitiated and contaminated air in the vehicles in which they ride. This has | long been lecognised in New York, and now i a movement has been promoted to improve ventilation conditions in all forms of transport. An organisation has been set up with the aim of educating the public into recognising that puie air is essential to health, comfort, and efficiency, and so lead to remedial measures being taken.1 The worker in a stuffy office ij3 usually able- to obtain relief, if only temporary, by leaving the room, for a £ew minutes or opening a window, but the occupant of a transport vehicle—railway carriage, motor vehicle, or whatever it may be —often has to put up with things as they happen to be. It is not always convenient to open a window. One may escape the resultant draught oneself, but it is generally obnoxious to other people. In motor-buses the ttavellei must either put up with the discomfort or get out. Most of tho tiouble arises irom exhaust fumes. A closed motorcar has a similar disadvantage People who ride in cars do not always realise that the air may bo polluted even though at is not malodorous, and rather than expose themselves to v draughts they load the air with carbon, dioxide. IMPROVEMENT PRACTICABLE. The improvement of transportation ventilation is thoroughly practicable from an engineering standpoint. It has already been demonstrated in actual practice that railroad cars can bo proporly ventilated and heated, or cooled, by the installation of modern air-conditioning systems; and it haa also been demonstrated that motor vehicles can bo ventilated by means

of devices which admit and discharge air without ci eating draughts. Contiaiy to tho general impression, the idea'of scientific ventilation and heating —or cooling'as the case may be —is by no means ne,w, •' Air-condition-ing" ib a modem teini, used to describe an art that is quito old. The British Houses of Parliament at Westminster, built in 1836, wcie equipped with an air-conditioning system, with provision lor heating, and moistening, or cooling the air drawn into the buildings. In the United States the first attempts at scientific ventilation were mado about the year 1849. Nearly forty years ago a bmo.ll group of specialists, imbued with the importance of their calling, gathered together in New Yoik to found the American Society 'of Heating and Ventilating Engineers. This organisation, formed to establish and maintain standards of practice and to advance tho science of ventilation, has been laigcly lesppnsible for bringing it to its piesent high pitch of cihcicncy. The society now numbers somo 2100 members. In recent years tho cause of good heating and ventilation has been greatly fuithered by new developments in tho field of rcfiigeration. It is these developments that have made possiblo yeai-iound temporatuio control, which, in combination with scientific air control, constitutes what wo know as air-conditioning, or manufactured climated,...■,?. ■ ... - ....... ~-: . The "fact that;.cli?ia,te:making machinery : power, for it's operation is in no senso a deterrent to its'. use on transportation vehicles. - Oa thecontrary, railroad: and subway trains, street cars,, ferries, aiid,tho like ha'yeabundant sources of,power;.with-which to operate such systems. ; The same is true' of buses,' 'taxis, ahd passenger cars,- which hot only can,provide power from their| engines, but from their batteries- and also- from their little used, though potentially' useful,■/■■.reserve of vacuum power./".'••.'•' "',.'• .■ . , ; ''•',' '■■■

A loiry containing six tons of hams caught fife on the main London to Birmingham Road, by Davontiy wireless station, and blazing fut destiO3'erl the road surface and held up a mile of traffic.