Word: smog
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Four months ago, as part of his crusade against smog, Abe Ribicoff, the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, served the auto industry with a blunt ultimatum: unless the auto manufacturers agreed to install blow-by* anti-pollution devices on all 1964 models voluntarily, the Administration would ask Congress to compel them to do so. Last week the automakers went Ribicoff one better, decided to make blow-by devices standard equipment on all their 1963 cars and light trucks...
Blow-by devices fight smog by piping the smog-making gases that collect in the crankcase back through the intake manifold to be burned in the cylinders. To ease the eye sting in Los Angeles, the nation's smog capital, Detroit last year equipped all new cars to be sold in California with a blow-by device made by General Motors' A.C. Spark Plug Division. G.M.'s blow-by, which is the only one approved so far by California's Air Pollution Control Board, added from $4.50 to $6.50 to the price...
...automen were quick to point out, blow-by devices are no cureall. Much of the air pollution in the U.S. is produced by industry rather than cars. And even in cars, less than 40% of the smog-producing hydrocarbons comes from the crankcase. The major menace is exhaust fumes, which so far can be controlled only by expensive (upwards of $75) "afterburner" attachments...
Stuart also sees his car as a partial answer to the smog problem, since it burns no fuel, hence has no exhaust. "Some day," observes Stuart, "unless we turn off the fumes, we may be legislated into using nonexhaust transportation. It's better to make a start...
...mile from ground zero, everything would be vaporized; destruction and death, even to those in the deepest shelters, would be certain. Initial heat radiation would be released in two separate pulses within a few seconds and would incinerate virtually everything within a five-mile radius. Although fog or industrial smog would greatly decrease the effect, exposed persons would suffer third-degree burns out to ten miles and blistering out to 15. Within seconds after the heat would come the blast wave; reinforced-concrete buildings might remain standing within five miles of ground zero, but conventional frame structures would probably...