London Air Research Articles

CLINICAL ASPECTS OF SHOCK

The difficulties which beset the study of shock in wartime are obvious. Casualties, when they occur, are apt to be in overwhelming numbers, and the available clinical staff to deal with the cases is so overworked with urgent therapeutic procedures that adequate recording and study may be impossible. For this reason clinical data on shock are infinitely more scanty than reports on animal experimentation. In this school and hospital some 200 wounded patients were admitted during the London air raid period; of these, 28 had injuries of such severity as to require blood transfusion. In spite of considerable reduction of staff, circumstances were thus reasonably favorable for simple clinical observations and records to be made. It is on the basis of this experience that the opinions expressed in this paper are put forward. When the present conflict began, views generally held of the nature of traumatic shock were those which

London's Air Raids

London's Air Raids

Effect of London Air on Marbles

Effect of London Air on Marbles

On the numerical distribution of micro-organisms in the atmosphere

In 1887, Frankland (1887) devised a method for the quantitative estimation of the micro-organisms present in the atmosphere and experimented also (Frankland and Hart 1887) with a method described by Hesse. Frankland published a curve showing the seasonal variation in the number of micro-organisms in the air of London. Saito, in 1904, using the plate method, carried out a series of experiments at Tokyo throughout a whole year with the object of studying seasonal variation. In 1910, Buller and Lowe, using both the plate method and Frankland’s quantitative method, investigated the seasonal variation in the number of micro-organisms in the air of Winnipeg. Preliminary observations made by the present author in this country in 1929, showed that the number of micro-organisms falling on plates in a given time vary very greatly with locality. Extreme values were recorded (Horne, 1930, p. 164) for sea-level at Sligachan, Isle of Skye (1 per 100 sq cm per min) and for an orchard at Exning, Cambridgeshire (176 per 100 sq cm per min). It was also observed that the numbers varied with situation in a given locality even when the distance between the centres compared was not very great. It was impossible to discover from the literature on the subject whether any significance could be attached to the observed differences since none of the earlier investigators had a sound statistical method at their disposal. The work of Fisher (1930) has supplied this need. It was decided therefore to work more systematically in order to discover what principles, if any, govern the distribution of micro-organisms in the air. If the type of distribution could be established, then it should be possible to interpret the experimental results with the aid of methods of statistical analysis.

The Atmosphere of the Underground Electric Railways of London: A Study of its Bacterial Content in 1920

1. The bacterial content of the air of the Underground Railways, when the average of all results of the bacteriological investigations is taken, does not numerically compare unfavourably with the outside air of London.2. The ratio of the number of organisms growing at room temperature appears to be about 14 for railway air to 10 outside air. For those growing at body temperature the ratio is considerably higher, namely 2 to 1 respectively. The mean per litre, for room temperature organisms, is about 9 in railway air, 6·3 in the outside air; for body temperature organisms 4·6 for railway air, 2·2 for outside air.3. The bacterial content of platform air, except on the City and South London Railway, would appear to be higher than that of carriage air; the total mean for platform air being 52 and for carriage air 42·8 organisms per 5 litres, or a ratio of 16·4 and 13·5 respectively to 10 of the open air. The higher proportion in platform air is generally speaking to be accounted for by the greater amount of draught and dust disturbance.4. The ratios of the total bacterial content of railway carriage air and carriage and platform air on the six lines to open air are estimated in the following proportions:

The London Fogs of November 25–27, 1923

THE accompanying graph (Fig. 1) shows the hourly variation in the quantity of suspended impurity, that is, sooty matter, in the air of London (Westminster), which was chiefly responsible for the recent smoke fogs. This curve shows clearly that the maximum density of the smoke fog occurred about mid-day, and there was a rapid increase in density which coincided with the period of lighting up of fires in the morning. The figures from which the curve is plotted were obtained from my automatic recorder, designed for the Advisory Committee on Atmospheric Pollution. When a large number of days are averaged and plotted, the distribution over the 24 hours is similar but more uniform, and it can even be seen that the maximum is reached later on Sundays than on weekdays (Eighth Report Advis. Comm. on Atmos. Pollution, p. 30).

An Automatic Recorder of Smoke Pollution

IN an article on “London Air” in the Times of August 23 Sir Napier Shaw directed attention to the clear atmosphere which was such a noticeable feature in all industrial centres during the recent coal strike. The article in question is, however, chiefly interesting for its description of an ingenious self-recording contrivance invented by Dr. J. S. Owens for the Atmospheric Pollution Committee of.the Meteorological Office, which registers hourly the amount of solid atmospheric impurities. A fixed volume of air is aspirated through a small disc of filter-paper, and from the depth of shade the amount of deposit is estimated by comparison with discs of standard shades. In London the notably dirty period is, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., i.e. the business hours of the day. The greatest impurity, is, of course, in winter, that of a May day being about one-quarter that of a November day. The day impurity in May is of the same order as the night impurity in November. The instrument should prove useful in detecting any noticeable improvement or otherwise in the amount of solid impurities in different towns. Although Sir Napier Shaw states that these measurements of the Committee “are noteworthy as the first series of systematic observations of the pollution of the air of London and other centres of population,” he has apparently overlooked the fact that a complete series of records was made in Leeds some years previously, in the course of which it was clearly established not only that the domestic fireplace is responsible for much the larger, proportion of the soot emitted from burning coal, but also, more important still, that this domestic soot is much more highly contaminated with tar than that from factory chimneys. In his reference to possible means of smoke prevention from domestic fireplaces, Sir Napier Shaw makes no reference to the carefully considered report which was published in the autumn of last year by the Committee on Smoke Abatement appointed by the Ministry of Health. It was there pointed out that the ordinary open kitchen range was wasteful and inefficient, and the Committee strongly insisted on the advantage of gas-cookers where gas was available. Low-temperature coke was also advocated whenever the right sort of material could be placed upon the market—a desideratum not yet attained. But there are numerous forms of improved ranges in which coke and anthracite can be burned much more economically than in the old open range, and, of course, without the emission of smoke. It now remains for the Ministry of Health to bring pressure to bear on those engaged upon Government building schemes to adopt these recommendations. It has a unique opportunity for setting an example in atmospheric purification.

The Air and Water of London: Are They Deteriorating?

The Air and Water of London: Are They Deteriorating?

The Air of London

The Air of London

II. The optical deportment of the atmosphere in relation to the phenomena of putrefaction and infection

An inquiry into the decomposition of vapours by light, begun in 1868 and continued in 1869, in which it was necessary to employ optically pure air, led me to experiment on the floating matter of the atmosphere. A brief section of a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1870 is devoted to this subject. I at that time found that London air, which is always thick with motes, and also with matter too fine to be described as motes, after it had been filtered by passing it through densely packed cotton-wool, or calcined by passing it through a red-hot platinum-tube containing a bundle of red-hot platinum wires, or by carefully leading it over the top of a spirit-lamp flame, showed, when examined by a concentrated lumi­nous beam, no trace of mechanically suspended matter. The particular portion of space occupied by such a beam was not to be distinguished from adjacent space.

Air and Rain

THIS work contains the germs of a system of chemical climatology. It indicates a plan of testing the purity of the atmosphere of localities with regard to certain constituents of organic origin—the debris of living things—by washing the air, and determining the character and amount of the substances in solution by certain micro-chemical methods. By the systematic repetition of these testings, the possibility is foreshadowed that we may be enabled to classify such atmospheres, and actually to assign to them quantitative sanitary values. It thus points out how we may be able to estimate the difference between the vitiated air of the town and the pure air of the country. Our senses and experience tell us plainly of the existence of such differences; but chemistry has been hitherto powerless to detect them. “It seemed to many as if the eye had obtained a mysterious power of seeing what was scarcely capable of being proved to be within the domain of substance, and the smell had a power of observing what was more an influence than a positive thing.” Cavendish, nearly a century ago, asserted that chemical experiments could not distinguish the air of London from the air of the country; and in spite of the labours of Bunsen and Regnault, Frankland and Williamson, which have rendered gasometry more susceptible of refinement and accuracy than any other branch of chemical analysis, this assertion seems as true of to-day as it was of the time when uttered. Hitherto chemists, in judging of the quality of the air of any locality, have been obliged to content themselves with determining the proportion of oxygen and carbonic acid which it contains, in conformity with the practice of their ancestors of a century back. Gradually, however, they have been forced to the conclusion that such determinations have very little positive value in enabling them to assign a value to the sanitary condition of an atmosphere—that oxygen was no panacea, nor carbonic acid as deadly as strychnine; and thus we have been thrown back upon our unaided senses to distinguish between the good and the evil. Supposing that some Martin Chuzzlewit, going out to another Eden, required information respecting the sanitary condition of the settlement, the chemist could tell him something concerning the water he might have to drink, but he would be utterly unable to enlighten him respecting the air he would be compelled to breathe. Some such considerations prompted the inquiries which have resulted in this book. Dalton's assertion that he could not distinguish the air of Manchester from that of Helvellyn, or generally the air which depresses from that which cheers and invigorates, seems to have forcibly impressed the author. For upwards of forty years he has laboured to remove the stigma on chemical analysis, and in this volume he concentrates his thoughts and experimental results. “It was with the desire,” he says, “of clearing the mystery of air to some extent that I have devoted so much of my time to the subject; and now I feel that, whilst I have succeeded in doing much of that which I intended to do, I have not got beyond the limits which earlier observers attained by the mere fineness of unaided sense, and by sound reasoning without experiment. Still I hope I shall be found to have put their suspicions into plainer language, proved that which they only imagined, and given in detail that which they only in a general, and, we may add, in a vague manner, had attained.” Air and Rain. By R. A. Smith, General Inspector of Alkali Works. (Longmans, 1872.)