J. E. Wallace Wallin

“ Smoke thus not only shortens the life of building materials, but it destroys the force of expression of the architecture so that buildings are reduced to a shabby mass of begrimed masonry. The sharp outstanding moldings, designs, friezes, cornices, ornaments and carvings—the essentially artistic in architectural construction—are not only rapidly eroded but they are obliterated by the dense deposit of tarry soot, or rendered invisible because of the diminished illumination caused by the murky palls of smoke that hang over our cities. ”

“ Their first, and sometimes only, artistic impressions are derived from an artistically limited and ultra-utilitarian environment, and from besmirched and sordid surroundings instead of from a clear, clean atmosphere of artistic excellence.
Not only do grimy, physical surroundings debase the aesthetic ideals of the dweller in smoke, but they also probably tend to foster personal habits of carelessness. The children playing in the streets in grimy cities become so accustomed to soot and smut that they learn to revel in grime and to glory in grease. ”

“ All that can be wisely attempted in an article which aims merely to furnish a preliminary survey of the psychological aspects of the smoke problem, is to outline the scope of the inquiry, to review briefly the direct and indirect data, whether impressionistic, observational, statistical or experimental, which bear on the problem and which are already available in recorded observations or in literary and scientific memoirs, and, finally, to suggest certain problems amenable to statistical or experimental study. ”

“ But the process of slow poisoning may insidiously eat away like a mild canker at vital tissues and thus in time deplete our potential reserve, thereby making it impossible for body and brain to function at their points of maximal efficiency. With an impaired brain the mind cannot reach its highest levels of creative insight and constructive achievement. It has often been a matter of comment that people who have lived in relatively smoke-free cities after coming to live in a city like Pittsburgh, have experienced a distinct disinclination to work, or a sort of chronic ennui. ”

“ Mankind has always taken a delight in color. Under primitive conditions man bedecks his body with colored habiliments for purely decorative rather than protective purposes. Deprived of the enjoyment of the natural terrestrial color effects by high buildings, man resorts to the artificial coloration of his buildings. But the smoke palls tend to subvert his every effort to satisfy the demands of his color sense. The abatement of smoke will do much to restore hue and chroma to their rightful places in the aesthetic development of manufacturing cities. ”

“ Less diseases are found during sunshiny than foggy or cloudy weather, while the death rate increases considerably during fogs. Thus during a November fog in Glasgow the death rate rose to 13.9 while in other Scotch towns free from fog it was only 3.3. But the increase in the mortality is not merely due to the fact that the sunless, foggy states lower the temperature and favor the growth of micro-organisms, but the water globules absorb particles of dust and acrid smoke and the toxic products of respiratory waste. (In factories dust particles become vehicles for the products of human fatigue.) ”

“ It is also important to emphasize the fact that no hard and fast line of demarcation can be drawn between the bodily and mental effects of smoke-clouds or smoke-produced weather states. The human organism is a psycho-biological unity, and we cannot, except in a purely artificial and arbitrary fashion, divide the soma and the psyche into two independent compartments. Bodily states normally influence mental states and mental states, in turn, normally influence bodily processes, particularly the functions of the glandular, circulatory, sexual and neural systems. ”

“ Unfortunately up to the present time there has been no scientific attempt made to directly measure the degree in which the producing capacity and the bodily and mental efficiency of city dwellers may be impaired by atmospheric impurities, nor has any effort been made to measure the direct or indirect influences of smoke upon sensory, motor, intellectual, affective and emotional functions, and on the habits and conduct of human beings. A part of the human waste caused by smoke-polluted air is certainly due to the irritation caused by solid smoke particles. ”

“ Few towns which tolerate the smoke nuisance can hope to compete for tourist trade. The loss in tourist trade caused by preventable smoke in manufacturing cities represents an enormous economic loss to the trades and professions of those cities. Not only so, people looking for a city residence will not seek centers reeking with smoke. Retired people of wealth will prefer the smoke-free cities of culture and art where they can inhale the uncontaminated, invigorating ozone of sun-kissed skies. ”

“ Moreover, the great amount of extra labor required to keep houses clean in smoky cities consumes the vital reserve of many women and robs them of the leisure moments which are theirs by right and which are essential for bodily rest and mental recreation and improvement.
Not only is smoke inimical to the highest aesthetic utilization of artificial coloration—particularly exterior coloration—but it obliterates the most richly colored panorama of nature, namely, the iridescent clouds of the sky. ”

“ Finally it should be emphasized that cities befouled with murky smoke are at a decided disadvantage as tourist or residential places. Wealthy tourists and globe trotters go to the brilliant, resplendent, ornate, clean cities—the show places—and not to the nasty, pungent smoke producers. Even if the tourist perchance does come to a dirty town he will rarely tarry there for any length of time. ”

“ The pernicious influence of the smoke on color effects is probably due to the fact that the colors become mechanically covered over by a coat of tarry soot and dirt. This tarry mass may effectually obliterate all color effects. It tends to adhere so firmly that it can only be removed, if at all, with great difficulty and with the aid of special solvents, and in the process of removal the colored paints often tend to scale off with the dirt. The defiling effect of the actual dirt is the most objectionable influence of smoke on stained glass. ”

“ The smoke-clouds of our cities influence a number of weather states which affect human conduct. The meteorological [Pg 10] conditions particularly affected are: sunshine, clouds, humidity, fogs, temperature, electrical potential and luminosity. That the smoke from factory and domestic fires, by filling the atmosphere with opaque clouds of smoke and by inducing mists and fogs, deprives the city dwellers of the luminous, vitalizing, cheering, health giving, germicidal rays of the sun, has been proved by numerous observations and tests. ”

“ Is it possible that the low esteem in which Pittsburgh is held in the world of productive scholarship—a matter of occasional remark among medical men and other scientists—is due to the fact that the air which its scientists must breathe is polluted and poisoned by smoke? ”

“ Minimum temperatures are found to be perceptibly higher in the cities than in the country, partly because of city heat, but chiefly because the smoke blankets prevent the escape of the heat at night. In Pittsburgh the minimum temperature averages about 4° higher than the temperature in the adjacent stations (Kimball) . In the day time the upper surface of the smoke clouds absorbs portions of the sun’s heat, and this inevitably lessens the heat on the ground surface. ”

“ The deleterious effects on the human system from inhalation of smoke-polluted air, which contains not only acrid and irritating solids, but a certain amount of deadly poisons, should be obvious from a consideration of the comparatively great density of the impurities in the atmosphere of industrial centers. The weight of the solid matter in the soot-laden air at Leeds, England, has been found to be 1.2 mg. ”

“ But, what is more important, there is also very probably some stimulating or irritating quality in clear, dry, sunshiny weather. Dexter assumes this, though he does not ascribe the stimulating quality to the dryness but to the increased electrical potential of dry air. Pupils are stimulated on clear, dry, sunny days, hence they are more active, aggressive and enterprising, but likewise more restless, high strung, emotionally unstable and therefore also more mischievous. A superabundance of energy and not a state of enervation predisposes to childish pranks and nervous explosions. ”

“ The limits of visibility vary with the number of dust particles in the air: 1,000 particles per cu. cm. render large objects like mountains invisible at a distance of 100 miles; 100,000 particles render them invisible 1 mile away, and 1,000,000 particles 1⁄10 of a mile distant (Aitken) . Smoke not only fills the atmosphere with countless numbers, but with extremely opaque particles. These particles may unite with globules of water and this makes the atmosphere still more opaque. As was stated above, in large cities even in fine weather there may be over 300,000 particles per cu. ”

“ Because of the stimulating effect of sunshine, may not an excess of sunshine be just as detrimental as a deficiency? It has, indeed, been assumed that the climatic dangers of the tropics are largely due to the injurious tropical sunlight, particularly to the abundance of the ultra-violet rays. Woodruff holds that the failure of the white race to colonize in the tropics is due to the excessive light, and not to the heat and humidity. ”

“ Not only do the solid and vaporous ingredients of smoke-begrimed air—noxious compounds of carbon, sulphur, nitrogen, chlorine, and arsenic—irritate the sensitive membranes of the eyes, nose, throat and lungs, and thus aggravate or cause inflammatory diseases of these organs, or produce collapse of their sensitive tissues, or increase their susceptibility to such specific diseases as bronchitis, pneumonia and subacute forms of phthisis; but the poisonous compounds also enter the gastro-intestinal tract, and this causes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and systemic poisoning. ”

“ Moreover, our lungs and alimentary canal can not so readily be “washed out,” so that smoke at least keeps us interiorally begrimed. So far as the young child is concerned, the labor of cleaning is usually thrown upon the mother. Mothers evidently grow weary of washing the faces and hands and changing the clothes of their youthful progeny several times a day. Hence the child is left to wallow in dirt. Adults may tend to continue the habits which they formed as children. ”

“ They, too, at any rate, grow weary of constant ablutions and changes of garments, and will tend to adopt the more somber shades of apparel which are less readily soiled by soot. The lighter raiment which often is more pleasing to the eye, and in the summer time is more conducive to comfort, must often be tabooed in smoky cities. The wearing apparel in such cities in consequence will offer less variety than in cities of low-smoke content. ”

“ Although thoroughly satisfactory data are not available it is undoubted that smoke (which is most abundant in the atmosphere in the winter time, owing to lessened convection) lowers very perceptibly the diurnal winter temperature in smoke-producing cities.
Finally, smoke indirectly affects the electrical potential of the atmosphere. I know of no direct study of this question, but it is possible that smoke causes a decrease in the potential because it tends to increase humidity. An increase of humidity decreases the potential (save possibly during fogs, as noted later, 14) . ”

“ That sunlight does exert psychic influences apart from any specific retinal influence is a matter of common experience. Nevertheless, the most important visual influence of sunshine is perhaps not the emotional satisfaction, cheer or exuberance which it engenders, but the optical value of good daylight. Daylight [Pg 21] is relatively colorless because it contains both chromatic and achromatic light. A bright colorless illumination is best from the standpoint of visual efficiency, health and affective quality. It is less fatiguing than a colored light or than intense or dull artificial light. ”

“ When it is remembered that the average adult consumes about 30 cubic inches of air in each inhalation or possibly 864,000 cubic inches every day, it does not seem an exaggeration to say that more persons are devitalized, disabled and poisoned by the impurities contained in smoke-polluted air, than by the noxious ingredients in food and water. ”

“ Not only are these conditions, bad as they are, aggravated during foggy weather but on moderately foggy days the quantity of solid organic impurities may be increased 700% as compared with fine weather (Russell) . During grimy, opaque fogs, the conditions are still worse.
That the constant inhalation of poison-laden air, largely made up of the soot particles which abound in manufacturing cities, diminishes the potential reserve, the productive efficiency and the bodily well-being of our city dwellers by causing specific diseases, has been abundantly shown by various studies. ”

“ One factory head has ventured the opinion that a disagreeable day yields about 10% less in labor returns than an agreeable day. During human labor the chemical products of activity are greatly augmented. The amount of carbon dioxide given off during a day of work is nearly twice as much as during a day of rest. ”

“ There is no doubt that opposed weather states exercise stimulating and irritating influences, on the one hand, and enervating and inhibitory influences, on the other hand; but it is not clear that this is due to a difference of electrical potential. It remains to be shown that heightened electrical potential acts as a nervous tonic and irritant. The theory assumes that heightened winds and sunshine increase the potential ”