Dentists - Doctors - Inventors - Medicine - Science

Feb. 02, 1966 - The Guinea-Pig who Volunteered To Breath In The Rush-Hour: Patrick Lawther walks two miles to work through the rush-hour crowds every morning. But he doesn't do it for his health. He does it four ours. For he is collecting substance X. This is an unknown element in polluted air which doctors think may be the reason why so many of us go spluttering to our sick beds every winter. This is a brave thing Dr. Lawther is doing, For there is plenty of Substance X around most rush-hours, as any computer will confirm. And very unpleasant it can be too. The amiable, 45-year old doctor walks right into it when he steps from his train each morning at London bridge. At a steady pace he walks in and out of the traffic jams, breathing in the exhaust fumes, the morning murk and the smoke from a million hearths. When he reaches his laboratory at St. Bartholmew's Hospital he climbs into an upright glass coffin (appropriately, some may think) and breathes into a kind of lung meter called a whole Body Plthyamograph. So fa he hasn't succeeded in identifying substance X as a specific chemical. But he and a fellow-volunteer who also walks to work through the cooty city have found that the function fo their lungs a impaired when air pollution is really bad. Other members of the Medical Research Council's Air pollution Research Unit are also assessing the harm that grimy air can cause. In the ten years years since the passing of the clean air act they have found signs that the effects of smoke on bnifits are falling off. The scientists say this coulan that if we made the air still cleaner we would be on the way to beating this killer disease. The scientists, too, are booming more and more convinced the air pollution plays only a minor part part in causing lung cancer. The case against cigarettes, they add, is overwhelming. Next year they the lung od 102 medical students who were fit and healthy when they entered college three years ago. They hope to find out if the lungs of students who started smoking in that period have been affected. Photo Shows I a glass coffin - Dr. Lawther checks on his lungs

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