COMMITTEE ON AIR POLLUTION REPORT, Presented to Parliament by the Minister of Housing and Local Government, Sir Hugh Beaver, Chairman,

PARLIAMENT. COMMITTEE ON AIR POLLUTION REPORT, BEAVER REPORT

Verlag:

80pp., octavo, original printed blue paper wrappers, a very good copy, British Parliamentary Paper, Command 9322. London, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1954. "This twentieth century Report starts from the assumption that pollution is a social evil. No proof needed, so stated the Report, for the commission's "emphatic belief that air pollution on the scale with which we are familiar country today is a social and economic evil which should not be tolerated." It also took for granted that a national effort to rid the country of pollution, though costly and sacrificial of necessity, was required. The Report stated as self-evident that the government, local authorities, industry, and householders alike have to pay the cost for the prevention of pollution. While in the nineteenth-century Reports its investigators were not sure just how damaging pollution was to health of the people, this 1954 Report expressed no doubt that it caused a injurious effect on physical and mental health. Remedial action and legislation were recommended at once in order to improve a condition which the report described as wholly bad "whether measured positively in relation to growth, well-being and joy of living, or more negatively in terms of death, disease, and the economic loss which goes with incapacity to work." This key 1954 Report (now known as The Beaver Report after its Chairman), made the startling assertion that air pollution cost the nation £250 million a year. This figure was arrived at by a careful estimate of the direct costs which included additional expenses for laundry, domestic cleaning, painting, repair of buildings, replacements of corroded materials, extra costs for transportation of coal, half of which went out of the chimney without proper combustion, additional lighting, extra medical expenses, and the like. The analysis of the economic loss through air pollution shows a complete departure from nineteenth century views. Formerly the primary concern of the commissioners was the cost which modest preventive measures would cause the manufacturers. No attempt was made in the early reports to analyze the loss of income incurred by pollution. The 1954 Report takes it for granted that the nation must pay for protection at least a fraction of what is wasted by the continuation of a "social and economic evil of the first magnitude. There is also an awareness in the recent report of the social problems created by pollution. Household consumers of smoke producing fuels would not be easily persuaded to change over to coke if such a change would entail the abandonment of the traditional open-fire heating system. The change of appliances, however, and the production and sale of a suitable brand of coke would be the prerequisite of the introduction of smokeless zones. But the commissioners believed that the added joy of living in clean residential areas would be worth the sacrifice of forsaking tradition. The inclusion in a dry and factual report of an emotional factor, such as the joy of living, is a novel feature. The nineteenth century reports did not care how much or how little a person's happiness was affected by pollution. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 25501

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Titel: COMMITTEE ON AIR POLLUTION REPORT, Presented...