CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -- SENATE

November 12, 1969

Page 33839

DEATH FROM THE NATION'S AIR

Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, in the past few weeks the States have begun to submit the proposed regional air quality standards for particulates and sulfur oxides required by the Air Quality Act of 1967. The provisions in that act which called for strong public participation in the determination of those standards, based on criteria issued by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, have paid off in strict standards proposed by most of those regions. Nevertheless, many industries which will be affected by these strict standards have complained that the levels required cannot be met.

Yet the proceedings of the American Public Health Association's meeting in Philadelphia yesterday show that they must be met. There can be no excuse which will compromise the Nation's health. The reports at the meeting showed definite relationships between excess concentrations of pollutants in the air and sickness and death, rebutting the claims made by those who would prefer to lag behind in the fight against air pollution that there is no proof of harm.

I hope that Americans all over the country will take these findings to heart and participate as much as possible in the conferences which will determine the air quality standards in their communities. Their health and their children's health is at stake.

I ask unanimous consent that an article concerning the Philadelphia meeting, written by Stuart Auerbach, and published in this morning's Washington Post be printed in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

REPORTS TIE AIR POLLUTION TO DEATHS, ASTHMA, ECZEMA

(By Stuart Auerbach)

PHILADELPHIA, November 11.-- Badly polluted air frequently causes 10 to 20 deaths a day in New York City. In Buffalo, the number of children hospitalized with asthma and skin inflammation increases significantly when the air is particularly dirty.

These reports today at the American Public Health Association's meeting bolstered the view of many scientists that pollution is one of the nation's greatest health hazards.

The report also underscored complaints made at the meeting about the lack of progress in the fight against pollution.

"Every year pollution has grown worse," said Charles C. Johnson Jr., head of the federal agency that deals with environmental health. "Every year there is more evidence of self-damage from environmental contaminants. Every year our cities have become less liveable, our highways more death-dealing. Every year, the barrage of chemicals, physiological, biological and psychological stresses to human health has increased.

"Yet we seem to have thought that we had to wait until we count the corpses in the streets before we could mobilize our forces in defense of human health," he told the nation's public health leaders. Johnson is head of the Consumer Protection and Environmental Health Service of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

The New York study found a direct relation between the amount of sulfur dioxide and smog -- major components in polluted air -- and excess deaths in the city over a five-year period.

"For the first time we are satisfied that we have some definite relations between sulfur dioxide in the air and excess deaths -- almost like the relation between smoking and cancer deaths," said Leonard Greenburg, a pioneer student of air pollution and health.

He did the study at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York with Dr. Marvin Glasser, a statistician.

Other studies of deaths and pollution have concentrated on periodic episodes of extremely dirty air. But Glasser and Greenburg showed that deaths started to rise sharply when there was as little sulfur dioxide filtered outside into the air as 2 parts per million.

The number of excess deaths varies from 10 to 20 a day when the level of sulfur dioxide is between .2 parts per million and .4 parts per million.

The air pollution level was that high on at least 10 per cent of the days during the five-year period of the study.

Sulfur dioxide is caused by the burning of gases and other fuels in industrial plants. The smog is a measure of solid particles in the air.

In Buffalo, Doctors Harry A. Sultz, Joseph G. Feldman, Edward R. Schlessinger and William E. Mosher measured the number of children under 16 hospitalized with asthma and eczema, a skin inflammation, against air pollution levels.

They found 32.4 hospitalized asthma cases for 100,000 children when there was little air pollution. The rate jumped to 50.7 cases per 100,000 at the highest pollution level.

The figures for eczema were even more striking. The low pollution rate of 2.9 hospitalized cases per 100,000 children jumped under conditions of high pollution to 10.2 per 100,000.

The study found "a striking association" between air pollution and the hospitalization of boys under five with asthma or eczema.

"These figures do not take into account the effect of air pollution on the vast majority of asthma and eczema patients who never require hospitalization," the study said. "If air pollution affects the incidents of the more severe cases among children, as is strongly suggested, there are important and widespread implications in terms of medical costs, physician and hospitalization utilization and personal suffering."

A study at the University of Rochester by Drs. David Rush and Walter W. W. Holland strengthened reports given by Sir George Godber of increased respiratory illness among smokers. Sir George is chief medical officer of the British Ministry of Health.

High school students who smoke more than 15 cigarettes a day have 10 times as many coughing attacks and production of sputum as nonsmokers. And, the study said, this was true of children as young as 13.