[Music]
[Narrator:] People on Earth are tiny creatures at the bottom of an immense ocean,
an ocean of air so vast that it dwarfs the seven seas.
Nevertheless, the supply of fresh air available to any city is limited.
Air, overburdened with pollution,
can be ruined just as lakes and rivers can be ruined,
despite the vastness of the ocean into which all rivers eventually run.
Every city and town enjoys days when the flow of air is fast and turbulent, and the sky seems fresh and newly washed.
But there are periods when the air lies still and stagnant for days on end.
Windy or calm, rain or shine, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,
our demands on the air supply continue.
The wheels of industry and of 70 million automobiles continue to turn.
The fires and furnaces of millions of homes, factories, and schools continue to burn,
and 180 million people must continue to breathe.
Free is the air.
It's no bargain if you can't use it.
In some respects, the ebb and flow of life in an energy-hungry fuel-consuming American city is one great oxidation,
the burning of fuels to give muscle to machines and breathing to give life to people.
We make heavy demands on our air.
The same supply needed to operate a steel mill, an oil refinery, a power plant,
and a host of power-producing machines
is also needed to provide the newborn infant with his first breath of air and all the breaths he will take throughout his years of life.
There is no escaping these facts.
The greater our prosperity and the greater the number of people, the greater our demands on the air.
The greater the variety of materials, services, and products we demand, the greater the burden on the air.
In the last decade or two, our science and technology have devised many new and ingenious ways
to exploit for our benefit the raw materials of the earth.
We sustain a rising standard of living which is one of the marvels of the world, thousands of new products each year,
hundreds of new chemical compounds.
And what shall we do with the byproduct wastes, many of which are unknown chemically and untested biologically?
Throw them into the air.
Throw them now, and breathe them later.
Smell them, taste them, swallow them later.
We have created an environment which satisfies the basic material needs of man better than any other in history.
But with each year that passes, we threaten more ominously our natural environment of air, land, and water.
Dump the gunk into the river.
Cut down the trees.
Poison the land and the air.
We are faithful users of soaps and cosmetics,
yet we step outside into a daily bath of airborne dirt to which we expose our freshly scrubbed hands and faces
and also the precious membranes of our eyes, throats, and lungs.
Where do all these obnoxious gases and particulates come from?
From our industries, our automobiles, trucks, and buses,
from the burning of wastes in hotel and apartment house incinerators, in community dumps, and in our own backyards.
Here is a city throwing more contaminants into the air than the atmosphere can handle,
stewing in a brew of gaseous and particulate pollutants cooked by the sun for greater toxicity, greater eye irritation.
Into somebody's lungs are breathed samples of all the waste produced by the greatest producer in history.
Which ones are we breathing today?
You name it.
Anything and everything from the fragrance of cosmetics and the aroma of roasting coffee,
to the irritating stench of sulfurous gases and the sweetly sickening smell of rotting garbage.