London’s pollution from coal fires

WE are not greatly troubled by the smoke nuisance in New Zealand cities, by reason of their comparative smallness, yet those who behold Dunedin from the bay on a sunny winter morning can see that even here the city dweller may be inhaling a good deal more than he bargains for, and suffering a temporary loss of “the incomparable and irreplaceable antiseptic action of sunlight.” The old problem has received new prominence at Home, with the publication of an interim report by a Departmental Committee on Smoke

and Noxious Vapours Abatement. The sources of the “plague cloud”, as Ruskin called it, are the industrial and the domestic chimney. The former is a notorious offender but it seems that in the report of the committee referred to the domestic chimney has now incurred official condemnation. Smoke appears to be definitely indicted as one of the chief causes for the rapid destruction to which the building stones of many important London edifices are subject. One authority has stated at least onehalf of the necessary repairs and upkeep to public monuments and buildings could be saved if a pure and smokefree atmosphere could be obtained.