From The Times December 11, 1921
The final report of Lord Newton’s Committee on Smoke and Noxious Vapours Abatement is a sane and convincing summary of a complex problem, the more weighty because it suggests no heroic measure. In this country some three million tons of unconsumed fuel escape into the air as soot, grit, and corroding vapours. In addition to the direct loss of a valuable substance, the present methods of consumption produce black fogs, shut off sunlight, destroy vegetation, and corrode our lungs and buildings. The only attempt to meet the situation is by a tangle of laws and by-laws, capricious in their scope and more so in their administration by some 1,400 authorities. The problem is sharply divided. On the one hand there is what the Committee calls “industrial smoke,” the product of boiler furnaces and other manufacturing processes. This is responsible for approximately only one-sixth of the evil as estimated in tons of discharged solids and gases, but includes some of the more poisonous vapours. This source, Lord Newton and a colleague found, hardly exists even in the manufacturing districts of Germany, because the growth of industries there is so recent that the plants almost always contain modern smoke-consuming devices. It can be dealt with in this country by improving existing legislation, by the infliction of severer penalties for infringement, and by entrusting administration to a smaller number of authorities. The larger and more difficult aspect of the problem relates to domestic smoke. The smoke from domestic coal-fires accounts for five-sixths of the bulk of atmospheric pollution. But it is out of the question to insist on the vast expense which would be entailed by the immediate substitution of other modes of heating. The Committee recommends that the provision of smokeless heating arrangements should be required in such new buildings as hotels, clubs, and offices, and, where practicable, before consent is given to housing schemes. It urges the co-ordination and extension of research into domestic heating generally. Clearly, if a smokeless fuel suitable for the ordinary types of grates could be produced on a commercial scale at commercial prices, the domestic fire difficulty would be overcome.