The Smog by John Creasey

substantiate what I am about to say. We have been carrying out experiments throughout the world to discover the effect of contamination of the atmosphere by carbon mon – and carbon dioxide. Results: shattering. Concentrations of over 10% are, we know, lethal. Lock yourself in your own garage with the engine of your car running and you won’t live to announce the result. Put plants such as tomatoes, all soft fruits, and green vegetables in an atmosphere polluted by 10% and they (a) absorb enough to make them nearly as effective as arsenic in the human stomach and (b) die. And topsoil, no matter how well fertilised, loses its body and the roots of all these things begin to wither. Given a sufficient concentration not lethal in itself, and man won’t be able to grow enough food to live on—and think of this, gentlemen.” He almost glared at Clitheroe, who was still bridling. “Think of this in conjunction with the world population; the (a) increase in live births, (b) increase in survival age of human beings, (c) decrease according to consumption ratio of food supplies. More people, more cars, more petrol or gasoline, more air pollution, less food, more chest, lung and bronchial ailments, more patients, fewer doctors in proportion, fewer nurses, fewer hospital beds—we are going the right way to wipe out the human race. Slide! ”
    While everyone, including Clitheroe, stared almost breathlessly at the man from whom the words were flooding, the lights were dimmed and a coloured slide appeared on the screen – of a dozen rows of tomatoes, red and sunripened, ready to pick. “Slide!” barked Smith, and another slide showed leaves wilting and tomatoes becoming yellow and wrinkled. “Result of 10% pollution in greenhouse atmosphere after twenty-four hours, absolutely authenticated, a dozen experiments being carried out under strictest conditions of scientific control. Slide. ”A picture appeared of half the tomatoes off the branches, all of them withered to wrinkled skin, the green of the leaves dead and brown, a mush of yellow at the foot of each plant. “Forty-eight hours,” Smith declared. “You see, gentlemen, the result of growing the food humans need in a heavily polluted atmosphere—potatoes, cabbage, lettuce, celery, pumpkins, beans, peas, soft fruits, wheat, corn, rye—you name the food and I’ve a picture of it. Human slides. Now I will show you some photographs of the human respiratory system after breathing air of a certain density of pollution. Take 5% … After one week … two weeks … three weeks … four … Hospital cases with post-operational photographs show the destructive effect of the pollution on the human tissues, one month of living in this concentration will probably so rot the tissues or cause such an advanced degree of cancer …”
    Slide after slide appeared, each worse than the one before.
    Smith talked for another ten minutes, conveying five times more than many men could have done in the same period, with a curiously compelling vividness. And all the time the slides click-click-clicked into position on the screen, showing pictures of human beings, mice, rabbits, monkeys and dogs, then of plant and tree life, all of it rotting, all of it dying.
    At last, Smith stopped with the peremptory command: “Lights.” As the lights came on, he barked: “Any questions?”
    â€œYes,” said the Police Commissioner very slowly. “How can one stop it?”
    â€œThree things would help,” answered Smith, and his words came like pistol shots. “ One: abolish cars with the internal combustion engine and don’t say that’s nonsense, nuclear powered vehicles are within sight, electrically propelled vehicles already available. Two: abolish all discharge of industrial power waste into the atmosphere and into rivers. Three, and most immediately practical, find a gas which will cancel