PRECAUTONS AGAINST GAS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 15, 15 December 1937, Page 9

PRECAUTONS AGAINST GAS.

PROGRESS IN BRITAIN. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, Dec. 13. During the debate in the House of Lords on the Air Raids Precautions Bill, the Air Minister (Viscount Swinton) referred to the anti-gas precaution work already accomplished. He said the school for instruction in Gloucester had been turning out instructed persons at the'rate of 120 monthly. A second school would be established shortly, in the neighbourhood of York. Some 200,000 volunteers had already been instructed in anti-gas measures, he said. The regular forces had also been trained as well as a very large number of the special constabulary. A special system of training had been instituted for doctors, and something like 10,000 doctors and 10,000 nurses had been instructed as to the giving of medical treatment in gas cases. It was essential to prevent anything in the nature of panic in the work of giving security, and this, he thought, had been accepted. Referring to the provision of respirators, he said that in July last year an old cotton mill was taken over on the principle of a “shadow factory” for the making of gas masks or respirators, and he believed Britain was the first country that had so developed the mhss production of gas masks on such a scale. Arrangements also had been made for providing 12 general store depots which would each hold something like 3,000,000. Five of these depots were already in existence.