Abstract
The subject of my concern at the present time as it relates to global pollution is an aspect of the problem which may affect our welfare sooner than the more obvious deterioration of our environment as it relates to health, esthetics or property damage.
While it is quite possible that a disaster directly related to the build-up of particulate matter and gases in the atmosphere may occur within the next decade unless some major improvements are achieved toward reducing the rapid increase in air pollution now prevalent, I believe that only those already in poor health will be the immediate victims. After all — if one considers that the cigarette smoker insults his lungs with a concentration of particulate matter of at least 10 million particles per cm3, — which is more than ten thousand times greater than the concentration of particles in country air and more than a hundred times worse than the air of a badly polluted city — one can realize that the human body can stand a considerable amount of physiological abuse. This is not to say we should push our bodies to their limit of compensatory abilities.
However, the phenomenon which concerns me most at the present time is the distinct probability that air pollution has already begun to inadvertently modify the atmosphere in which we live and the climate on which our complex civilization is based.
It is this subject that I would like to discuss with you in this Symposium.
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© 1970 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Schaefer, V.J. (1970). The Inadvertent Modification of the Atmosphere by Air Pollution. In: Singer, S.F. (eds) Global Effects of Environmental Pollution. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3290-2_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3290-2_17
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