Part 1

Mellon Institute of Industrial Research and School of Specific Industries

Robert Kennedy Duncan, Sc.D. Director. Raymond F. Bacon, Ph.D. Associate Director.

STAFF OF THE SMOKE INVESTIGATION

Raymond C. Benner, Ph.D. Chief Fellow and Chemist. Joseph A. Beck, LL.B. Attorney. A. B. Bellows, B.S. Engineer. W. W. Blair, M.D. Physician. J. E. Clevenger, M.S. Botanist. B. A. Cohoe, A.B., M.D. Physician. E. W. Day, A.M., M.D. Physician. S. R. Haythorn, M.D. Physician. W. L. Holman, A.B., M.D. Architect. Richard Hooker B.S. Architect. C. T. Ingham Architect. Richard Kiehnel Architect. H. H. Kimball, Ph.D. Meteorologist. Oskar Klotz, M.D., C.M. Physician. E. B. Lee Architect. C. H. Marcy, A.B. Bacteriologist. O. R. McBride, B.S. Engineer. E. H. McClelland, Ph.B. Bibliographer. R. T. Miller, Jr., A.B., M.D. Surgeon. A. F. Nesbit, B.S., A.M. Engineer. J. J. O’Connor, Jr., A.B. Economist. K. K. Stevens, B.S. Chemist. A. A. Straub, M.E. Engineer. Carlton Strong Architect. W. W. Strong, Ph.D. Physicist. J. E. Wallace Wallin, Ph.D. Psychologist. W. C. White, M.D. Physician. Ruth E. Gilchrist Secretary.

Mellon Institute of Industrial Research and School of Specific Industries

Smoke Investigation Bulletin No. 3

Psychological Aspects of the Problem of Atmospheric Smoke Pollution

By J. E. Wallace Wallin, Ph. D. Director of Psychological Clinic, University of Pittsburgh

University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, Pa. 1913

Introduction

All that can be wisely attempted in an article which aims merely to furnish a preliminary survey of the psychological aspects of the smoke problem, is to outline the scope of the inquiry, to review briefly the direct and indirect data, whether impressionistic, observational, statistical or experimental, which bear on the problem and which are already available in recorded observations or in literary and scientific memoirs, and, finally, to suggest certain problems amenable to statistical or experimental study.

The smoke palls of our industrial centers exert both a direct and indirect influence upon the human organism. The direct influence is due to the immediate contact of the smoke-contaminated and poison-laden air with the skin, mucous membranes and sense organs of the body. The indirect effects are traceable to the various meteorological states which are due to smoke products in the atmosphere, and which in turn directly influence the body. Frequently, possibly always, the smoke conditions and the state of the atmosphere are so inextricably mixed that the biological effects must be ascribed to the joint action of both factors. Only in a controlled experiment would it be possible absolutely to segregate, and thus separately to measure, the effects of the smoke and meteorological factors of weather states. This has not yet been attempted.

The mental effects due to atmospheric smoke and its related weather states are likewise both direct and indirect. The indirect effects are due to the influences exerted by smoke clouds and smoke-produced weather states on the physiological organism--on health, well-being, energy, freshness, potential reserve, sensori-motor efficiency--and to the influences thus directly exerted by the changed bodily states on the mind: on mental tension, balance, inhibition, impulse, inclination, feeling, emotion, thought, and conduct. On the other hand, the direct mental effects are traceable to the immediate influences, whether conscious or unconscious, exerted on the individual’s mental action by his own experiences--by the thoughts, feelings and impulses which have been excited in him by various bodily states, sensations and perceptions produced by cloud and weather conditions--or which have been directly produced by processes of association and habit formation, the latter of which have themselves been initiated by thoughts or responses occasioned, in the first instance, by the physiological effects of external influences. The action of the mind itself does have a determining influence upon its own subsequent attitudes, beliefs, propensities and habits. It is important that these direct effects of the mind’s own action upon its subsequent behavior be recognized, for much of the mental gloom and depression occasioned by dismal cosmic influences has merely been initiated by the external stimuli. Their peculiar intensity is largely due to the subject’s own introspections, to his own stream of thought. The mental influences are often more pronounced than the bodily influences, whether the mental influences arise from somatic alterations or from introspective changes. Cosmic states are, perhaps, less to be regarded as _causes_ of mental action than _factors_ which may upset the emotional balance, lessen inhibition and alter the train of thought and conduct.

It is also important to emphasize the fact that no hard and fast line of demarcation can be drawn between the bodily and mental effects of smoke-clouds or smoke-produced weather states. The human organism is a psycho-biological unity, and we cannot, except in a purely artificial and arbitrary fashion, divide the _soma_ and the _psyche_ into two independent compartments. Bodily states normally influence mental states and mental states, in turn, normally influence bodily processes, particularly the functions of the glandular, circulatory, sexual and neural systems.

I. The Pathology of Smoke

THE DIRECT AND INDIRECT EFFECTS OF SMOKE ON BODILY AND MENTAL WELL-BEING.

_A. The direct effects of smoke on health and conduct._

When it is remembered that the average adult consumes about 30 cubic inches of air in each inhalation or possibly 864,000 cubic inches every day, it does not seem an exaggeration to say that more persons are devitalized, disabled and poisoned by the impurities contained in smoke-polluted air, than by the noxious ingredients in food and water. Not only do the solid and vaporous ingredients of smoke-begrimed air--noxious compounds of carbon, sulphur, nitrogen, chlorine, and arsenic--irritate the sensitive membranes of the eyes, nose, throat and lungs, and thus aggravate or cause inflammatory diseases of these organs, or produce collapse of their sensitive tissues, or increase their susceptibility to such specific diseases as bronchitis, pneumonia and subacute forms of phthisis; but the poisonous compounds also enter the gastro-intestinal tract, and this causes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and systemic poisoning. That the gastro-intestinal tract is affected by inhaled solids has been demonstrated by the experiments of Saito (19)[1] on dogs and rabbits which were compelled to inhale, during periods varying from 1 to 33 hours, air charged with white lead dust. Only from 4 to 24% of the dust was subsequently recovered from the respiratory organs while the remainder was found in the digestive organs. In the case of a man who inhaled the air from 10 to 15 minutes on 20 occasions and who avoided acts of swallowing, 95% of the dust remained in the body, 50% of which was primarily retained in the nares. By processes of exclusion 12% probably found its way to the lungs, for 60 to 80% was recovered from the alimentary canal. Thus the principal portal of entry of soluble inhaled dust appears to be the alimentary canal.

The deleterious effects on the human system from inhalation of smoke-polluted air, which contains not only acrid and irritating solids, but a certain amount of deadly poisons, should be obvious from a consideration of the comparatively great density of the impurities in the atmosphere of industrial centers. The weight of the solid matter in the soot-laden air at Leeds, England, has been found to be 1.2 mg. per 100 cu. ft. of air, or 200 lbs. per sq. mi. (300 ft. high.) The soot-fall per square mile per year has amounted to 220 tons in Leeds, 820 tons in Glasgow and 259 tons in London. Moreover, by means of the dust counter the number of dust particles in the air at Leeds has been found to vary from 530,000 to 3,736,000 per cu. inch. In manufacturing cities the number of dust particles often exceeds 300,000 per cu. cm. even in fine weather, as compared with a few hundred in the country (Aitken, 4). A large percentage of these particles consists of the soot from factory, locomotive and domestic fires. Not only are these conditions, bad as they are, aggravated during foggy weather but on moderately foggy days the quantity of solid organic impurities may be increased 700% as compared with fine weather (Russell). During grimy, opaque fogs, the conditions are still worse.

That the constant inhalation of poison-laden air, largely made up of the soot particles which abound in manufacturing cities, diminishes the potential reserve, the productive efficiency and the bodily well-being of our city dwellers by causing specific diseases, has been abundantly shown by various studies. The mortality from acute pulmonary diseases, especially in children and old people, has increased, and the course of pulmonary tuberculosis has been accelerated in Germany as the country has become more industrial. The increase in non-tubercular lung mortality has amounted to 30% in the smoky town of Waldenburg compared with the nearby textile town of Wusterwaltersdorf (Ascher, 16). The death rate per 10,000 for the same diseases is 30.6 in the non-smoky city of Hamm as compared with 57.4 in the smoky city of Gelserkirchen. In all German towns with a population of over 15,000 the death rate is 24.0, while in the smoky industrial centers of similar size in Rhenish Westphalia it is 34.0, and in the industrial districts in upper Silesia it is 36.0 (Ascher, 4); in rural districts in England it is 17.5 compared with 26.5 in urban industrial districts(4). During the anthracite strike in this country there was reported an increase of suspected tubercular cases. In Rochester there was observed an increase of pulmonary affections with the increase of the smoke nuisance between 1895-1904. In Pittsburgh a recent investigation by Dr. W. C. White shows that pneumonia increases with the density of atmospheric smoke, irrespective of the density of population or of poverty. The increase is as marked in the well-to-do as in the poorer sections with relatively the same smoke density. In late years pneumonia has assumed a very acute and fatal form in Pittsburgh.

That “much of human life, energy and happiness is wasted by the effects of vapors, noxious because wasted, is now an established certainty” (Gillespie, 8). It has been estimated that London’s annual smoke tax amounts to $1,500,000 in death, disease and lowered working capacity alone. Unfortunately up to the present time there has been no scientific attempt made to directly measure the degree in which the producing capacity and the bodily and mental efficiency of city dwellers may be impaired by atmospheric impurities, nor has any effort been made to measure the direct or indirect influences of smoke upon sensory, motor, intellectual, affective and emotional functions, and on the habits and conduct of human beings. A part of the human waste caused by smoke-polluted air is certainly due to the irritation caused by solid smoke particles. The functional efficiency of the visual, naso-pharyngeal, pulmonary, gastro-intestinal and neural mechanisms, may be more or less disabled by constant irritation by solid particles. But it is likewise presumptively probable that irritating, acrid soot particles and poisonous smoke compounds may become factors in causing premature decay, untimely death, exaggerated fatigue, frequent sickness, instability of attention, malcontent, irritability, lessened self-control and possibly psychic disequilibrium. It is probable that there goes on a gradual process of absorption by the human system of the poisonous products of imperfect smoke combustion. This insensible intake may not give rise to any definitely recognizable acute disorder or specific disabilities. But the process of slow poisoning may insidiously eat away like a mild canker at vital tissues and thus in time deplete our potential reserve, thereby making it impossible for body and brain to function at their points of maximal efficiency. With an impaired brain the mind cannot reach its highest levels of creative insight and constructive achievement. It has often been a matter of comment that people who have lived in relatively smoke-free cities after coming to live in a city like Pittsburgh, have experienced a distinct disinclination to work, or a sort of chronic ennui. A Pittsburgh business man writes that “people coming to Pittsburgh to reside notice a great depression; likewise many residents of Pittsburgh on visits find they feel infinitely better and business men working for periods in cities where there is not the same smoke find they can do twice as much work. These are not isolated cases but the result of very general inquiry which I have made for a number of years.[2] People very frequently remark on the depressed expression not only on the working men of Pittsburgh, but they also observe it in the clubs. It is very frequently referred to humidity, but this is entirely wrong as the humidity in New York ranges much higher than in Pittsburgh. This certainly is a condition that tends to keep people from coming here and makes people desirous of leaving at the first opportunity.”

The writer of this essay has now lived in Pittsburgh somewhat over a year and has experienced during this time a marked distaste or disinclination to engage in productive authorship. Clear, trenchant, reflective thinking seems to have been more difficult; and the attempt to write concisely, incisively and perspicuously has seemed more labored. Is it possible that the low esteem in which Pittsburgh is held in the world of productive scholarship--a matter of occasional remark among medical men and other scientists--is due to the fact that the air which its scientists must breathe is polluted and poisoned by smoke? [There are other contributory factors, as we shall see in the following sections, viz., the various devitalizing weather states induced by smoke, and possibly the common use of convection heat from gas stoves in the living rooms. Convection heat from gas stoves, it is maintained by Scotch investigators, is more injurious than heat by radiation (21).] Is it possible that the highest spiritual creations of the citizens of smoke-begrimed cities are being sacrificed on the altar of commercial greed? Is it possible that, in the interests of a pseudo-economy, we are impairing the very brains of the people by permitting our breathing air to be saturated with the poisons of preventable fumes? Is it possible that the industrial energy for which Pittsburgh has become famous is less due to the surpassing excellence of the brain and brawn of its workers than to the munificent bounty of its mines? We shall probably not be able to offer any satisfactory answer to questions such as these until a series of controlled psychological experiments on efficiency, fatigue, and endurance (in so far as various motor, sensory, and intellectual functions are concerned), have been carried out under varying degrees of density of atmospheric smoke.

_B. The indirect influences of smoke on mental and physical well-being; the meteorological aspects of atmospheric smoke contamination._

I shall first discuss the meteorological variations produced by smoke, and then the effects of the smoke-produced weather states upon well-being.

The smoke-clouds of our cities influence a number of weather states which affect human conduct. The meteorological conditions particularly affected are: sunshine, clouds, humidity, fogs, temperature, electrical potential and luminosity. That the smoke from factory and domestic fires, by filling the atmosphere with opaque clouds of smoke and by inducing mists and fogs, deprives the city dwellers of the luminous, vitalizing, cheering, health giving, germicidal rays of the sun, has been proved by numerous observations and tests. It has been computed that seven-eighths of the sun’s power is shut out by the smoke in the manufacturing center of London, and five-eighths in Westminster. The percentage of sunshine in these two places compared with the rural stations of Oxford, Cambridge, Marlborough and Gildiston was found to be as follows (12):

TABLE I.

Winter Summer From 1881-1885: 17% 83% ” 1906-1910: 38% 92%

It is observable that the amount of sunshine suffers an enormous reduction in the winter time but only a very slight diminution in the summer, and that during the last five years the conditions have considerably improved, due, as we are told, to the considerable abatement during the last decade or two of London smoke. During one calendar year the hours of sunshine in the center of Leeds amounted to 1164 while the corresponding figure for Adel, which is only 4 miles distant, was 1402 (4). Thus the loss of sunshine in Leeds due to smoke amounted to 17%. The diminution of sunshine in towns near smoke-producing cities is, again, shown in the following tabulation of the comparative monthly average duration of bright sunshine for a period of 20 years (24):

TABLE II.

Station Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Runhill Row 22.8% 7.5% 14.1% 30.5% Westminster 27.7% 13.1% 18.4% 32.8% Kew 50.8% 38.1% 40.3% 54.6% Cambridge 61.0% 40.6% 48.9% 72.8%

At Kew, seven miles west of London, the reduction of sunshine due to the London smoke has been placed at 37% for a whole year.

In the United States of America for the decennium, 1901-1910, the aggregate hours of sunshine, percentage of possible sunshine, number of cloudy days, number of partly cloudy days, and number of foggy days have been found by the Pittsburgh smoke investigators, from a study of the records gathered by the United States Weather Bureau in various cities throughout the country, to be as shown in Table III.

TABLE III.

STATISTICS OF SUNSHINE IN 18 CITIES OF THE UNITED STATES

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Aggregate Percentage No. of No. of No. of Total hrs. of of possible cloudy partly foggy of 3 Station. sunshine. sunshine. days. cloudy days. and 4. days.

Baltimore 26,466 58.7 1440 1018 142 2458 Boston 25,877 56.8 1398 1003 98 2401 Buffalo 23,200 49.7 1713 1324 157 3037 Chicago 26,442 57.9 1238 1282 116 2520 Cincinnati 26,758 58.6 1356 1202 81 2588 Cleveland 22,394 47.8 1584 1187 67 2771 Denver 29,355 65.9 645 1500 45 2145 Detroit 23,201 50.3 1477 1165 133 2642 Los Angeles 31,521 70.9 743 1404 258 2147 Louisville 25,715 56.8 1284 1094 233 2378 New Orleans 26,091 58.6 1045 1365 162 2410 New York 28,762 57.6 1279 1182 120 2461 Philadelphia 25,249 56.6 1369 1071 127 2440 Pittsburgh 22,573 49.0 1385 1294 185 2679 Portland, Me. 26,914 59.4 1321 1040 303 2361 San Francisco 25,453 56.3 900 1136 241 2036 St. Louis 24,957 58.7 1185 1019 42 2204 Washington D. C. 25,078 55.8 1088 1135 115 2223

It is observable that all the cities which have become notorious in the matter of smoke pollution show a very low percentage of sunshine, the worst conditions obtaining in the two cities having the most unsavory reputation for smoke, viz., Cleveland and Pittsburgh. These two cities consistently have the worst records for sunshine, for percentage of possible sunshine and for cloudy and partly cloudy days (combined totals). Unfortunately no meteorological data are available from stations situated in non-smoke-producing centers whose geographical conditions are similar to those obtaining in smoke-producing cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Cincinnati and St. Louis. The above data only enable us to compare the atmospheric conditions of one smoky city with another smoky city or with cities whose geographical surroundings are so different as to render the data useless for comparative purposes. However, the data recently collected by the Smoke Investigation of the University of Pittsburgh show, in complete accordance with similar English findings, that the lessened amount of sunshine in Pittsburgh is due to the smoke factor. Figures based on the number of tons of coal consumed in Pittsburgh from 1905 to 1911 show a fair degree of parallelism between the quantity of coal consumed and the number of smoky days. During the years in which an increasing amount of coal has been burned (owing to the heightened cost of gas) the hours of sunshine have fallen from about 2800 to 2200. Likewise the days on which the United States Weather Bureau has observed light or dark smoke in Pittsburgh, have increased as follows for the successive years from 1905-1911: 85, 87, 106, 124, 112, 100 and 156 days (O’Connor, 17). With the increase of coal consumption has come an increase of smoky days. Dr. Benner tells me that the per cent. of daylight (as chemically determined) in Pittsburgh was reduced for last November about 32%, for December 23%, January 36% and February 44% as compared with the town of Sewickley which is only about 12 miles distant. There can then be no doubt that smoke lessens the amount of sunshine.

Smoke likewise is directly related to the production of moisture, mist, clouds, rain or fogs, because it supplies some of the solid particles which may serve to aid in the formation of suspended drops of water. Rain drops are often formed around a solid nucleus. Without solid particles of dust in the atmosphere there would probably be much less mist, rain and dew (4). We would, therefore, infer on merely _a priori_ grounds that smoke contributes to the production of fogs. That this is so seems to be shown by actual investigation. An investigation conducted by the Meteorological Council in 1901-1903 indicated that 20% of the fogs in London were smoke-induced, (4, 21)--artificially induced and therefore preventable fogs. Most suggestive, as showing that smoke is partly responsible for the existence of fogs, are the fog and smoke statistics gathered in London during the last 30 years, as shown in Table IV (applicable to the winter months only). The number of days of fog have been reduced nearly 300% and the hours of bright sunshine have increased nearly 100% during this 30-year period (10).

TABLE IV.

Date Days of Fog Hours of bright sunshine 1883-1892 29.9% 55.6% 1892-1901 20.7% 70.1% 1901-1910 10.6% 93.5%