Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/250

 Taking the Smoke Out of the Smokiest City

How Pittsburgh Has Solved Its Most Irksome Problem

The public now knows that smoke means a waste of fuel; that a waste of fuel is a waste of money, and that a waste of money is bad business management. The Bureau of Mines says that the best smoke preventer known to science today is a conscientious and careful fireman, provided he is sup- plied with necessary aids in the form of proper equipment. The smoke is expressed in terms of the Ringlemann chart

����TO all inlcnts and purposes, Pitts- burgh has solved its smoke prob- lem. Although it is having a hard lime living down the time-worn nick- name of "the Smoky City," the fact remains that as a result of the efforts of a municipal Bureau of Smoke Regula- tion, the "production and emission of smoke" in Pittsburgh has been abated fully seventy-five per cent within the past three years. And that in spite of the fact that the business activity and the coal consumption have greatly increased during that time.

No other city has been confronted with a smoke problem of such magni- tude or has encountered so i 2 many difficulties in solving it. The three rivers, the deep valleys, the frequency of high humidity and low wind velocity, with resultant fogs, were handicaps to be overcome. The extent of the mill district, the great number of stacks in restricted areas, the immense (|uantity of smoke-producing fuels consumed, the characteristics of the high volatile coal natural to the district and the \aricty of boiler and metallurgical furnaces, were in part responsible for the dense smoke that used to cover the city like a

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��Ringlemann smoke chart with which the density of smoke is estimated

��pall, sometimes making it necessary to use artificial light in midday.

Experts have calculated that smoke causes more than a half billion dollars damage each 3,'ear to li\^es and property in the United States. Investigators of the Mellon Institute of Industrial Re- search, University of Pittsburgh, dis- covered that Pittsburgh's annual loss, due to the smoke nuisance, was at least ten million dollars. The agitation for smoke abatement crystallized into a great civic m<nement, in which all the industries of the city were urged to join. On March 4, 1913, the city council passed several ordinances relating to the 3 1 regulation of prtnluction and

emission of smoke and en- larging the scope of the Bu- reau of Smoke Regulation, organized some time before. The smoke limits were changed from eight minutes in one hour for all stacks, to one minute in any perioil of eight for locoinotix'cs and steamboats, and two minutes in any period of tiftecii for all stationary stacks.

The Bureau also extended its in spections and watched closely for viola- tions, appealing to the industrial and business concerns to assist as a matter of

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