Report / Committee on Air Pollution.

  • Great Britain. Committee on Air Pollution.
Date:
1954
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report / Committee on Air Pollution. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/84 (page 21)
    DOMESTIC SMOKE 68. We have made it clear that much can be done to reduce industrial smoke. But nearly half of all the’ smoke in the air comes from domestic chimneys. The proportion is greater in areas where houses predominate. Further, most of the domestic smoke is produced during the winter months when foggy conditions are most likely to occur. Although the smoke from domestic chimneys is less dense than that from industrial chimneys, it is discharged at a low level and its harmful effects are thereby accentuated. No cure can, therefore, be found for the heavy smoke pollution of our cities and towns unless the domestic chimney is dealt with. In our view there would be little justification for requiring industry and commerce to take all possible measures to prevent smoke, often at considerable cost, if the problem of domestic smoke were not also tackled. 69. The extension of smokeless zones is an admirable and effective method of securing smokelessness and we advocate its use to the maximum extent where conditions permit. Its scope is limited, however, since complete smokelessness is not practicable in areas which include industry as well as houses. We contemplate therefore a second type of area—a “ smoke control area ”’—which would be on a much larger scale and in which concurrently with the measures we propose to reduce industrial smoke, domestic users would be required to use only smokeless fuels, bituminous coal containing not more than 20 per cent. of volatile matter (and in consequence substantially smokeless) or manufactured fuels having similar smokeless qualities. We recommend the progressive extension of smokeless zones and smoke control areas throughout the black areas under the legislative provisions out- lined in paragraph 109. In addition we recommend local authorities to make their new housing estates smokeless by requiring the occupiers, as a condition of tenancy, to use only smokeless fuels in the appliances with which they are provided. We have inspected a large municipal estate where this method has been used with evidently satisfactory results. 70. The development of smokeless zones and smoke control areas will, of course, entail radical changes in the present pattern of domestic fuel use. The problem of domestic smoke is fundamentally different from that of industrial smoke in that bituminous coal can usually be burnt with little smoke in suitable industrial plant, whereas in most of the appliances at present used for domestic heating, it cannot. Smoke can be reduced by the careful use of well-designed closed stoves and of some of the latest improved open fires, but at the present time there is no prospect of developing an open fire, or a stove which could take the place of the open fire, capable of burning bituminous coal smokelessly. At the same time it seems clear that in many parts of this country open fires are likely to remain the usual means of heating houses for many years to come. Any real cure for domestic smoke must therefore mean replacing house coal by smokeless fuels, in which we include electricity and gas. 71. One possible means of replacing house coal by a smokeless heating service would be by district heating schemes in which groups of houses would have their rooms warmed and hot water supplied from a central source. Such schemes, however, though both technically efficient and smoke- less, are only practicable in special conditions, and in the absence of any simple heat meter, generally uneconomic. We must, therefore, seek the teplacement of house coal by direct use of smokeless fuels in individual houses. 72. In the black areas it is estimated that some 19 million tons a year of bituminous coal are now used for domestic purposes, and we have reviewed in detail the possible sources of smokeless fuels which would be required