The air we breathe is being used as a common sewer where fumes and gas are dumped with too little attention to the fact that air, like water, is one of our limited resources. It cannot be expected to continue to absorb contamination at an ever-increasing rate and still be healthful.

Furthermore, there is every reason to think that as industries and urban areas grow in number and kind and concentration, so will the things that dirty the air, the American Society of Planning Officials says.

"Air pollution is no longer a problem limited to the great refining centers and coal-iron areas. It is likely to be found in any industrial or urban area," according to the Society. It was this judgment that led the Society to publish its findings in a Planning Advisory Service report, "Air Pollution-a Growing Urban Problem," a 38-page examination of what is known about the problem and what is being and can be done about it.

In general, the report notes, there are two types of air pollution; (1) the smoke from burning coal and fuel oil and (2) the fumes and gases that arise wherever combustion and evaporation take place—from cars, smouldering refuse piles, gas and oil stoves, or chemical plants. From now on, air pollution problems are liable to concentrate around No. 2, according to the report, because "the techniques of controlling smoke emission have been pretty well mastered" so that where there is still a blanket of smoke particles, the fault is not a lack of the knowledge of what to do but rather a lack of laws and their enforcement.

Another reason that the emphasis is changing and will change even more is that the sum of pollutants is often worse than any of its smelly or irritating parts. That is to say, certain products mix in the air with natural elements (like the sun's rays) and with one another; new compounds are formed this way; and the result may be far worse pollution than that contributed by any single source.

Of course it is an impossible goal to expect to outlaw the emission of gas, fumes, mists, acids, or vapors one day and have the air clean and fresh the next. A "realistic goal," according to the report, could be to work for and expect a percentage reduction in over-all air pollution within the first year, a higher percentage the second year, and so on.

Just last month, impurities in the air around New Orleans, La., claimed the lives of two and sent more than 350 asthmatics to the hospital. Other places in the world where California symptoms have been reported are: Elizabeth, N. J.; New York; Baltimore, Md.; Philadelphia, Pa.; Washington, D. C.; Detroit, Mich.; Seattle, Wash.; Portland, Ore.; London and Manchester, England; Copenhagen, Denmark; Paris, France; Algiers, Algeria; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Bogota, Columbia.

But "the extent, duration, and intensity of air pollution in the Los Angeles basin and the resulting large-scale investigations of causes and cures" are cited in the report as reasons that students of the problem pay close attention to action taken in California against smog.

Smog effects on the human eye and respiratory system, on livestock and vegetation, as well as on painted surfaces and structural materials, were so critical that the state legislature gave the Los Angeles Air Pollution Control District the power to declare various "alerts" when instruments show that there is a dangerous amount of foreign matter in the air.

The plan is that on the first-stage alert, a warning to stop all outdoor burning is issued. On the second-stage alert, a health menace is declared to exist in a preliminary condition; operation of all cars, trucks, and buses may be curtailed at once; and refineries and other operations judged to be major contributors to smog may be shut down. Among the last are chemical plants, incinerators, open-hearth steel furnaces, asphalt saturators, rubber plants, pavement burners, tar heaters, and paint and varnish manufactories. It is also to be forbidden to put gas in ships, tank cars, and trucks during this second stage.

On the third-stage alert, all industry and virtually all traffic is to be stopped, and if necessary martial law may be imposed.