Word: sulphureous
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...property damage alone, according to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Air pollutants abrade, corrode, tarnish, soil, erode, crack, weaken and discolor materials of all varieties. Steel corrodes from two to four times as fast in urban and indus trial regions as in rural areas, where much less sulphur-bearing coal and oil are burned. The erosion of some stone statuary and buildings is also greatly speeded by high concentrations of sulphur oxides...
Vegetation, too, suffers from polluted air-even in rural areas that until recently were believed to be out of the range of contamination. Sulphur dioxide causes leaves to dry out and bleach to a light tan or ivory color, kills the tips of grasses and of pine and fir-tree needles...
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...
...their surface. They enable suhphur dioxide, for example, to penetrate deeper into the lungs than it could on its own; without particles to carry it, the gas can be exhaled relatively easily from the upper respiratory tract. Other participates act as catalysts in the atmosphere, speeding the conversion of sulphur dioxide into more harmful sulphuric acid. Particles of arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, lead, chromium and possibly manganese, discharged into the atmosphere by a variety of man-made processes, may contribute to cancer and heart disease...
...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-dioxide concentrations in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area as "the worst, the most critical...