AIR IMPURITIES

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 9 April 1934, Page 5

AIR IMPURITIES

ftINVESTIGATION IN BRITAIN. The telltale gauges scattered throughout Britain, which day by day , measure the impurities in the air, produced some curious facts last year, states the “News-Chronicle.” For instance, the Department or Scientific and. Industrial Research, m its latest report on atmospheric pollution, notes that the gauge at Ravenscourt Park, a residential district in. West London, shows a great increase in pollution in sulphates. The total deposit for the year there was at the rate of 107 tons per square • mile, which is the maximum recorded at anv one station. Taking a group of 48 stations ior which an average could be determined, the report shows that the deposit or> tar —the sticky oily matter in the arr was 14 per cent less for last year than for the average of the last five -• years. The decrease in deposit or total solids was 11 per cent. Records with the “automatic filter, which indicates the amount of impurity suspended in the air. producing smoke haze, were made at 13 stations. Referring: to the loss of sunlight duo to smoke pollution, the report mentions that at Halifax, in 1931-32, the _ more heavily-polluted of two stations compared with the other lost as .much as 20 per cent of sunlight, while m the vear 1932-33 the corresponding loss was about 17 per cent.