Today, all the air in the United States is considered polluted to some degree. Notice the findings of scientists as reported in the New Haven Register: “The last vestige of clean air the center noted in the United States was near Flagstaff, Arizona, but it disappeared six years ago when . . . air pollution from the California coast reached the northern Arizona city.”

Biophysicist William Curby says that steady polluting has produced a huge cloud of floating filth hanging permanently over the entire East Coast of the United States. He says: “The loading rate of dirt particles over the East Coast is now ahead of the unloading rate.”

And the fouling is earth wide.

Germany’s Der Spiegel reports concerning that country’s average: “The air pollution in the Federal Republic [West Germany] is already seven times as bad as in the U.S.A.”

In Japan, Tokyo traffic police now spend only a few hours at a time on duty. Then they go to centers to breathe oxygen. Cafés and arcades in Tokyo have coin machines that dispense oxygen for shoppers.

The situation is so serious that scientists at an atmospheric research center in the United States predict that, at the present rate, “in 10 to 15 years from now every man, woman and child in the hemisphere will have to wear a breathing helmet to survive outdoors. Streets, for the most part, will be deserted. Most animals and much plant life will be killed off.”

Scientific American magazine says that, under the influence of sunlight and the catalytic action of nitrogen oxides in the air, smog forms and hydrocarbons (normally inoffensive) that pour out from cars and factories are partly oxidized to form “peroxides” and “ozonides.” The magazine adds: “These compounds are the most toxic air pollutants known. They will cause damage to plants in concentrations of one part in 10 million parts of air.”

No wonder that bronchitis, asthma and all sorts of respiratory ailments are increasing rapidly. Emphysema is the fastest-growing cause of death in the United States, up 500 percent in the last ten years in New York city.