All that can be wisely attempted in an article which aims merely to furnish a preliminary survey of the psychological aspects of the smoke problem, is to outline the scope of the inquiry, to review briefly the direct and indirect data, whether impressionistic, observational, statistical or experimental, which bear on the problem and which are already available in recorded observations or in literary and scientific memoirs, and, finally, to suggest certain problems amenable to statistical or experimental study.
The smoke palls of our industrial centers exert both a direct and indirect influence upon the human organism. The direct influence is due to the immediate contact of the smoke-contaminated and poison-laden air with the skin, mucous membranes and sense organs of the body. The indirect effects are traceable to the various meteorological states which are due to smoke products in the atmosphere, and which in turn directly influence the body. Frequently, possibly always, the smoke conditions and the state of the atmosphere are so inextricably mixed that the biological effects must be ascribed to the joint action of both factors. Only in a controlled experiment would it be possible absolutely to segregate, and thus separately to measure, the effects of the smoke and meteorological factors of weather states. This has not yet been attempted.
The mental effects due to atmospheric smoke and its related weather states are likewise both direct and indirect. The indirect effects are due to the influences exerted by smoke clouds and smoke-produced weather states on the physiological organism—on health, well-being, energy, freshness, potential reserve, sensori-motor efficiency—and to the influences thus directly exerted by the changed bodily states on the mind: on mental tension, balance, inhibition, impulse, inclination, feeling, emotion, thought, and conduct. On the other hand, the direct mental effects are traceable to the immediate influences, whether conscious or unconscious, exerted on the individual’s mental action by his own experiences—by the thoughts, feelings and impulses which have been excited in him by various bodily states, sensations and perceptions produced by cloud and weather conditions—or which have been directly produced by processes of association and habit formation, the latter of which have themselves been initiated by thoughts or responses occasioned, in the first instance, by the physiological effects of external influences. The action of the mind itself does have a determining influence upon its own subsequent attitudes, beliefs, propensities and habits. It is important that these direct effects of the mind’s own action upon its subsequent behavior be recognized, for much of the mental gloom and depression occasioned by dismal cosmic influences has merely been initiated by the external stimuli. Their peculiar intensity is largely due to the subject’s own introspections, to his own stream of thought. The mental influences are often more pronounced than the bodily influences, whether the mental influences arise from somatic alterations or from introspective changes. Cosmic states are, perhaps, less to be regarded as causes of mental action than factors which may upset the emotional balance, lessen inhibition and alter the train of thought and conduct.
It is also important to emphasize the fact that no hard and fast line of demarcation can be drawn between the bodily and mental effects of smoke-clouds or smoke-produced weather states. The human organism is a psycho-biological unity, and we cannot, except in a purely artificial and arbitrary fashion, divide the soma and the psyche into two independent compartments. Bodily states normally influence mental states and mental states, in turn, normally influence bodily processes, particularly the functions of the glandular, circulatory, sexual and neural systems.
I. The Pathology of Smoke
The direct and indirect effects of smoke on bodily and mental well-being.
A. The direct effects of smoke on health and conduct.
When it is remembered that the average adult consumes about 30 cubic inches of air in each inhalation or possibly 864,000 cubic inches every day, it does not seem an exaggeration to say that more persons are devitalized, disabled and poisoned by the impurities contained in smoke-polluted air, than by the noxious ingredients in food and water. Not only do the solid and vaporous ingredients of smoke-begrimed air—noxious compounds of carbon, sulphur, nitrogen, chlorine, and arsenic—irritate the sensitive membranes of the eyes, nose, throat and lungs, and thus aggravate or cause inflammatory diseases of these organs, or produce collapse of their sensitive tissues, or increase their susceptibility to such specific diseases as bronchitis, pneumonia and subacute forms of phthisis; but the poisonous compounds also enter the gastro-intestinal tract, and this causes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and systemic poisoning. That the gastro-intestinal tract is affected by inhaled solids has been demonstrated by the experiments of Saito ([19])[1] on dogs and rabbits which were compelled to inhale, during periods varying from 1 to 33 hours, air charged with white lead dust. Only from 4 to 24% of the dust was subsequently recovered from the respiratory organs while the remainder was found in the digestive organs. In the case of a man who inhaled the air from 10 to 15 minutes on 20 occasions and who avoided acts of swallowing, 95% of the dust remained in the body, 50% of which was primarily retained in the nares. By processes of exclusion 12% probably found its way to the lungs, for 60 to 80% was recovered from the alimentary canal. Thus the principal portal of entry of soluble inhaled dust appears to be the alimentary canal.
The deleterious effects on the human system from inhalation of smoke-polluted air, which contains not only acrid and irritating solids, but a certain amount of deadly poisons, should be obvious from a consideration of the comparatively great density of the impurities in the atmosphere of industrial centers. The weight of the solid matter in the soot-laden air at Leeds, England, has been found to be 1.2 mg. per 100 cu. ft. of air, or 200 lbs. per sq. mi. (300 ft. high.) The soot-fall per square mile per year has amounted to 220 tons in Leeds, 820 tons in Glasgow and 259 tons in London. Moreover, by means of the dust counter the number of dust particles in the air at Leeds has been found to vary from 530,000 to 3,736,000 per cu. inch. In manufacturing cities the number of dust particles often exceeds 300,000 per cu. cm. even in fine weather, as compared with a few hundred in the country (Aitken, [4]). A large percentage of these particles consists of the soot from factory, locomotive and domestic fires. Not only are these conditions, bad as they are, aggravated during foggy weather but on moderately foggy days the quantity of solid organic impurities may be increased 700% as compared with fine weather (Russell). During grimy, opaque fogs, the conditions are still worse.
That the constant inhalation of poison-laden air, largely made up of the soot particles which abound in manufacturing cities, diminishes the potential reserve, the productive efficiency and the bodily well-being of our city dwellers by causing specific diseases, has been abundantly shown by various studies. The mortality from acute pulmonary diseases, especially in children and old people, has increased, and the course of pulmonary tuberculosis has been accelerated in Germany as the country has become more industrial. The increase in non-tubercular lung mortality has amounted to 30% in the smoky town of Waldenburg compared with the nearby textile town of Wusterwaltersdorf (Ascher, [16]). The death rate per 10,000 for the same diseases is 30.6 in the non-smoky city of Hamm as compared with 57.4 in the smoky city of Gelserkirchen. In all German towns with a population of over 15,000 the death rate is 24.0, while in the smoky industrial centers of similar size in Rhenish Westphalia it is 34.0, and in the industrial districts in upper Silesia it is 36.0 (Ascher, [4]); in rural districts in England it is 17.5 compared with 26.5 in urban industrial districts([4]). During the anthracite strike in this country there was reported an increase of suspected tubercular cases. In Rochester there was observed an increase of pulmonary affections with the increase of the smoke nuisance between 1895-1904. In Pittsburgh a recent investigation by Dr. W. C. White shows that pneumonia increases with the density of atmospheric smoke, irrespective of the density of population or of poverty. The increase is as marked in the well-to-do as in the poorer sections with relatively the same smoke density. In late years pneumonia has assumed a very acute and fatal form in Pittsburgh.