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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 20, 1955)
America's Problem off Air Pollution Drawing Attention off Congress, Experts Editor' Note: Next Tuesday is the (eenth anniversary of the start of the treat Donora smog which left 20 residents of the little Pennsylvania Industrial town dnd and thousands ill. Donora't disaster was an acute form of a chronic condition which ef fects most Ameittans. Following is a dispatch on air pollution and what Is being done about it. Br JOSEPH L. MYLER Untied Press Correspondent Washington (U.R) All Ameri can! breathe dirty and occasion ally poisonous air some of the time. Seventy per cent of them, the residents of large city areas, breathe it most of the time. Perhaps as many as 10,000 U. S. communities, a survey in dicated today, hav local air pollution problems crying for solution. Not even the wide open spaces of rural America are exempt from "natural smog," blowing dust, forest fire smoke, ragweed pollen, and invasions of atmos pheric filth from distant centers of contamination. The dirty air most Americans breathe may contain scores of different irritants or poisons everything from acid droplets to zinc fumes. , In one community air pollu tion may appear, to be no more than a mild nuisance. In another it may constitute an economic calamity. It may on occasion be come a killer. Health Hazard One thing appears certain: Contaminated air can be a health hazard. Many medical authori ties are beginning to suspect strongly that it may be a major cause of lung cancer. In any case, exclusive of its effect on the nation's physical and social wellbeing, ditty air is a destroyer qf, wealth. W. B. Gib son of the Stanford Research In stitute has said the direct econ omic loss from air pollution may be around $1,500,000,000 a year. Dr. Louise C. McCabe, nation ally known air "pollution author ity recently drafted by the Pub lic Health Service, has listed someof the costs of air pollution as fnlows: Depreciation of land and buildings including the slum breeding creeping blight known as' "downtown deca y" $300,000,000. Crop and forest and domestic animal losses $30,000,000. Cost of municipal and state programs $10,000,000. Equipment Costly Equipment installed to con trol air pollution $150,000,000. Damage to merchandise $300,- 000,000. Is anything being done to make the air clean as well as free? Individual communities and industries have been fight ing against dirty air for years. -But for only about a year and a half has the federal gov ernment been doing much of anything about what has be come both an international (as in the Detroit-Windsor area) and interstate (New York-New Jersey) as well as local (Donora, Pa., and Los Angeles) health and economic problem. And only 'last summer did Congress authorize the Public Health Service to undertake a five-year research campaign to find out (1) just what air pollu tion is, (2) just what it does, and (3) how best to combat it. For the first year of the cam paign Congress appropriated $1,780,000. How long will it be before the campaign produces major results? Many, many years. Re search on the chronic effects of air pollution on human beings and animals alone will take more than five years, according to the government. Air pollution is as old as na ture. Pliny the Elder was killed by poisonous air in 8 A.D. dur ing an eruption of Mount Ve suvius. Man-caused air pollution is the big menace to modern pop ulations, however. Ever since the industrial revolution got under way in the 18th century man has been pouring billions of tons of waste gas, smoke, dust and chemicals into the atmos phere. It has been estimated that factory chimneys each year vent 6,000,000,000 tons of carbon di oxide alone. The rise of the mo tor car with its exhaust fumes and of the chemical industry has added incalculably to contamin ation of the once-safe air. Smog Disasters It took the great smog disast ers of the 20th century to awak en authorities to the health haz ards of dirty air. In 1930 a heavy fog enveloped the highly industrialized Meuse Valley of Belgium. The toll: 60 dead. Seven years ago on Oct. 27, 1948, a similar fog rolled over Donora, Pa., an industrial town of 12,300 population and sat there for six days. Twenty died, perhaps as many as 6000 fell ill. In December, . 1952, London, which had been struggling with smog for six centuries, had its worst blackout. It lasted four days. In the following two weeks some 4000 persons died before their time as a result Smog chronically afflicts Los Angeles where "objectionable conditions" exist 100 days out of the 365. Warm air from the Pacific often is trapped over Los Angeles by high mountains east of the city. ' Gov. Goodwin J. Knight once asked Mark D. Hollis, chief san itary engineer of " the Public i Health service, if removing one j of the barrier mountains would help Los Angeles rid itself of j smog. ! It would help, all right, but could it be done? Who's to say what Los Angeles can do? A city that went across hun dreds of miles of deserts and mountains to tap the Colorado river for water . might be cap able of even greater marvels to i get itself a supply of clean air. Medford r tt Tribune United Press Full Leased Wire United Press Full Leased Wire Second Section MEDFORD, OREGON, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1955 Pages 1-1? Berkeley Scientists Prove Existence Off ever-LBefore Isolated Anti-Protons Washington (U.R) Atomic researchers have proved the ex istence of anti-protons, particles of matter long believed theo retically to exist but never be fore isolated. Scientists captured the "nu clear ghost" at the Atomic En ergy commission's radiation la boratory at the University of California at Berkeley. They did so with the university's $9,500, 000 bevatron, the world's most powerful atom smasher, in what was, called "oneof the classical experiments of nuclear physics." The anti-proton is the nega tive version of a proton, one of the fundamental particles of an atom's nucleus. It is of the same mass as the proton but of a dif ferent charge. " The AEC said the anti-proton is born outside an atom s nu cleus following some "high en ergy nuclear event." Reinforces Theory . "The discovery does not modi fy the model of the atomic nu cleus," the AEC said. "Rather it reinforces and solidifies current theory: This eliminations of un-' certainty about one of the cor nerstones of nutfear theory is one of the discovery's most val uable features." Until the bevatron wasbuilt, there was no way to create a nuclear bombardment of suffic ient energy to capture the elu sive "ghost." The Berkeley scientists used the bevatron to accelerate pro tons to 6.2 billion electron- volts. The protons then were aimed at a copper. target inside the beva tron chamber. When .the protons crashed into one, of the copper atoms, there was created a "brand new set of heavy particles, a proton and an anti-proton." The scientists isolated the anti-protons by set ting up a "maze" through which Housefly Said One of . Greatest Disease Carriers St. Paul, Minn. (U.R) Never underestimate the power -of the housefly, the Minnesota State Medical Association said. It is one of the greatest disease-carriers in history. "Screening and insecticides have helped reduce the menace," the association said, "but good sanitation is the one weapon against which flies cannot de velop resistance. One careless person can be the source of enough flies to annoy everyone on the block. The bsst method of controlling flies is to elimin ate places where they lay their eggs." Costly Railroad Bridge Never Put To Use , Portage, Wis. (U.R) There is a lift bridge over a government canal for the Milwaukee Rail road tracks here that has cost the company nearly $100,000 since 1938 but has never been opened. The bridge was constructed in 1938 at a cost of $72,470 plus 22,725 for additional work all because the canal was called a navigable stream between- the Fox and Wisconsin' Rivers. It was built by order of the govern ment's Corps of Engineers. Rail road officials say there are no plans for removal of the structure.-' ' -. ".r; V- ., only they could pass. The AEC said the anti-proton is stable only in a vacuum. Observed Only So far scientists have been able to observe the anti-protons only by "radiation counters but efforts are being made to obtain photographs of them in photo emulsions, the AEC said. Announcement of the anti-proton was made simultaneously here and in Berkeley yesterday. Dr. Ernest O. Lawrence, Nobel Prize winner and director of the UC ' radiation laboratory, cred ited four of his associates with the discovery: '. Dr. Emilio Segre, 50, a native of Italy; Dr. Owen Chamberlain, 35, a native of San Francisco; Dr. Clyde E. Wiegand, 40, in Oakland; and Dr. Thomas Ypsil antis, 27, formerly of Salt Lake City. Dr. Willard F. Libby, acting chairman of the AEC, wired the four men congratulations, say ing the discovery was "valua able in man's effort to control and use his physical environ ment' - ; - mm nun SPECIALS FOR FRIDAY AND SATURDAY, OCT. 21-22 FINEST PRODUCE IN MEDFORD Choice Jumbo YAMS Excellent Candied, Fine for Baking ' 2 us 15 CELLO BAG CARROTS 1 Pound Minimum.. - 2 ",,19 PUMPKINS for Hallon WISE BUYS IN BETTER FOODS JUST RIGHT FOR JACK-O-LANTERNS i DECKER luat m0U l TAMALES ciy 3 c-89 16'0clasSJar4 q,$100 G'Ve kfli "DlG tT PDL7C1I WppW V rW ViAit The Every Day Dessert Xajprajljlg stamps aar 3 4 A. 35 FISHER'S CASHEWS 7-oz. Cans..! 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