The City: Clearing the Air

This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire—why it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.

—Hamlet

This is just exactly the way that New York City's air appeared to a ten-member Task Force on Air Pollution headed by Saturday Review Editor Norman Cousins. "New York City," the task force reported, "pumps more poisons per square mile into its air than any other major city in the U.S."

The pestilent congregation consists of 230,000 tons of soot, fly ash and other paniculate matter, 597,000 tons...

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