From The Times: January 4, 1923
A fuller inquiry into the cause of the deaths in the Bethnal Green coal-gas case might relieve public anxiety. There was no doubt as to the deaths being due to gas escaped from a broken main, and the Coroner’s jury, with a little assistance, were able to delete from their first verdict a statement that the pipe had been carelessly laid. But did the three victims die merely because gas, in a quantity enough to smother them, found its way into their sleeping chamber in a house without a gas supply? Or was it because the gas contained so fatal a proportion of a poisonous substance that a comparatively small quantity killed them?
Coal-gas does, indeed, contain the poisonous gas known as carbon monoxide, which is colourless, odourless, and more highly diffusible than coal-gas itself. Carbon monoxide is the ingredient to which the poisonous as opposed to the merely smothering qualities of coal-gas are due. When gas was first distributed as a domestic illuminant it contained only traces of carbon monoxide. The introduction of iron retorts into the process of manufacture raised the percentage to about six. Later on gas-makers began to dilute coal-gas with “water-gas”, which contains approximately 46 per cent of carbon monoxide, and under the Gas Regulation Act of 1920 there is no restriction on the proportion in which the dilution may be made.
The Coroner, in opening the Bethnal Green inquest yesterday, said that the question occurred “as to whether it was possible to lessen the poisonous ingredients in gas.” The Gas Referee of the Board of Trade stated that there had been “substantially no change” in the composition of the gas supplied in Bethnal Green for the last 20 years. At the last annual meeting of the Gas Light and Coke Company, the company concerned, the Chairman said that their gas was “practically the same as in 1914”.
These are high authorities. But there is a difference of nearly 11 years in the period they give, and “substantially” and “practically” are not comforting qualifications in statements relating to the presence of a poison in a public commodity. Moreover, other high authorities, in our own columns and elsewhere, have made no secret of their uneasiness regarding the proportion of carbon monoxide in coal-gas.
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