75-16-B5
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Pollution # 3
TranscriptApparently we don't have to look for another world to move to just yet. We aren't going to smother and smog or run out of clean water. I'll be right back. All of us are concerned about the environment and I'm sure none of us wants to be remembered by our children and our grandchildren as having left them a ravaged polluted planetary garbage dump. For two days now I've been talking about the findings of the chairman of the National Air Quality Commission Dr John McKetta. He's presented facts that put the matter of air pollution in a new perspective. if you've been reading that we're seriously depleting our oxygen and replacing it with toxic substances such as carbon monoxide you may be as pleasantly surprised as he says he was. In the first place the theory we've long accepted that all our oxygen is created by growing green things is not true. The evidence according to the doctor is overwhelming that the sun, cosmic rays and water vapor in the upper atmosphere is the source. The supply of oxygen in the atmosphere is virtually unlimited and is not threatened by man in any significant way. We know that automobile exhaust throws 270 million tons of carbon monoxide into the air every year and it has a life in dry air of about three years. Yet measurements show there is no increase at all in the concentration of carbon monoxide in our air. In Los Angeles where there is a real smog problem the carbon monoxide concentration reaches as much as 35 parts per million. Without Los Angeles air inversion layer and geographic situation that figure would probably be only one and a half parts per million. Obviously Los Angeles does have a problem but hear this-the carbon monoxide content of cigarette smoke is 42,000 parts per million. in a stuffy room where a number of people are smoking the concentration is from three to five times as great as it is on a Los Angeles street on the worst day. To sum up on carbon monoxide the doctor reports that in the "broad expanse of our natural air carbon monoxide levels are totally safe for human beings." Now before someone sets up a howl that I'm advocating an end to our fight for less air pollution-that isn't true at all. I want the bluest sky we can get and the purest air and I know that our cities can be made much more pleasant and less smelly. But it seems to me we can carry on the campaign to do this without a sense of panic that clouds our judgment and leads to costly mistakes. Right now our main effort is directed toward oxides of nitrogen which come out of the automobile tailpipe and cause the photochemical reactions which color the air muddy brown. There's no question there a problem in areas such as Los Angeles where there's a more or less constant temperature inversion trapping the air. But Dr. McKetta lists the findings in this field as his number three shock and surprise. Nature it seems also produces oxides of nitrogen. As a matter of fact nature produces 97% of them. If we could successfully eliminate 100% of all the man-produced polluting oxides of nitrogen we'd still have 97% of what we presently have. He adds that sometimes he thinks nature must be laughing at us. He proves the possibility of that last observation with this astounding fact, The late Dr. William Pecora has calculated that all the man-made air pollution since the first man appeared on Earth and up to the present totals less than the amount of particulate and noxious gases thrown into the air by just three volcanic eruptions-Krakatoa (Java) 1883, Mount Katmai (Alaska) 1912 and Hekla (Iceland) in 1974. We should have a law against volcanoes. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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