Word: smog
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Chief culprits in the Donora, London and New York smog disasters were probably sulphur dioxide and sulphur trioxide, which, either in gaseous form or converted into sulphuric-acid mist, can irritate the skin, eyes and upper respiratory tract. Extreme exposure, such as might occur in an industrial accident, can do irreparable damage to the lungs-and even attack the enamel on teeth...
...Angeles ponders new strategies in its fight against pollution, other cities-aided by increasing federal technical and financial aid made possible by the Clean Air Act of 1963-have begun to take tentative and sometimes faltering steps in the same direction. To reduce New York City's dirty smog, some 50% of which comes from chimneys, smokestacks and open fires (compared with only 10% of Los Angeles' smog), a regulation has recently been passed to limit the sulphur content of fuel burned within the city. It came none too soon; the U.S. Public Health Service describes the sulphur...
...heavily polluted New Jersey, which shares high sulphur-dioxide concentrations with New York, a state assemblyman introduced a bill that would empower the Governor to shut down plants and incinerators and prohibit the movement of vehicles and the burning of any fuel during smog emergencies. Private citizens or corporate officers refusing to comply could be fined as much as $100,000 and imprisoned for as long as ten years...
...that the air that now streams across the Pacific from Asia is clean when it reaches the west coast of the U.S. It picks up pollution over the coastal states, loses some over the Rockies, and becomes dirty again as it moves toward the Eastern Seaboard. "Imagine the smog that would accumulate," he says, "if every one of the 800 million Chinese drove a gasoline-powered automobile-as every Angeleno does...
...Chinese autos and the new fac tories that produce them will quickly pollute the Asian skies, Neiburger fears, dirtying the air currents even before they reach the U.S. Eventually, if air pollution increases beyond the capacity of the atmosphere to cleanse itself, smog will encircle the earth, he says, "and all of civilization will pass away. Not from a sudden cataclysm, but from gradual suffocation by its own effluents...