Clearing the Air

This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire--why it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.

--Hamlet

This is just exactly the way that New York City's air appeared to a ten-member Task Force on Air Pollution headed by Saturday Review Editor Norman Cousins. "New York City," the task force reported, "pumps more poisons per square mile into its air than any other major city in the U.S."

The pestilent congregation consists of 230,000 tons of soot, fly ash and other paniculate matter, 597,000 tons of sulphur dioxide, 298,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, 567,000 tons of hydrocarbons and 1,536,000 tons of carbon monoxide annually. It leaves every New Yorker with 730 Ibs. of pollutants to contend with every year.

Last year, the task force estimates, dirty air cost New Yorkers $500 million. Moreover, "all the ingredients now exist for an air-pollution disaster of major proportions--given the same sheltered topography as Los Angeles, New York City would be uninhabitable." The biggest offender is the city government itself, whose eleven garbage incinerators alone spew forth some 39 tons of filth daily. The local utility, Consolidated Edison, is another major contributor, last year burned 10 billion Ibs. of soft coal and more than 800 million gals, of oil inside city limits.

There were heartening signs that New Yorkers were finally getting fed up with the foulness in the air. Only a week earlier, the New York City Council had unanimously passed the toughest air-pollution bill ever, including fines for violators ranging from $500 to $1,000. The same week, New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller sent a bill to the legislature that would permit the state's Air Pollution Control Board to establish even stricter fuel standards.

Even with the new laws, it will obviously be several years before New Yorkers can begin to breathe easily again. "What we're doing is racing to stand still," says Caroline Konheim of the Citizens for Clean Air. Besides, says Councilman Robert Low, who sponsored the new city bill, "once we get New York cleaned up, we'll just begin to realize how bad New Jersey smells."

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