Now, therefore, be it resolved: That the American Public Power Association urges a large-scale research and development effort to bring the electric vehicle to the market.

APPA hopes that your committee, in attacking the most pervasive source of air pollution, will recommend the kind of large-scale research and development effort necessary to make available a pollution-free means of transportation for our urban areas.

Our Association urges the committee's support for a two-pronged research and development effort. Such an effort would include both design of new vehicles suited for battery operation and development of lighter, longer-lasting, and less expensive batteries which can power the vehicles of the future.

Senator MUSKIE. The hearings are recessed until tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock.

(Whereupon, at 11:55 a.m., the committee recessed, to reconvene at 10 a.m., Wednesday, June 8, 1966.)

AIR POLLUTION-1966

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8, 1966

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AIR AND WATER POLLUTION

OF THE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC WORKS, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 4200, Senate Office Building, Senator Edmund S. Muskie (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Senators Muskie and Boggs.

Senator MUSKIE. The committee will be in order. This morning we have three distinguished witnesses who will testify on specific air pollutants. Much of the testimony will concentrate on the problem of pollution traceable to lead. I think that no preliminaries are necessary before we begin this testimony but Senator Boggs would like to have just a moment.

Senator BOGGS. Mr. Chairman and Surgeon General and other witnesses, I regret that I have two other committee meetings this morning, both executive sessions, right at this time. They are trying hard to get a quorum. So, I am going to ask to be excused. I express appreciation for your appearing here. I am very much interested in the testimony you will give. I will read it most carefully. I feel very badly that this is the type of situation that we have this morning but it happens. Because I recognize the urgency of the work this committee is doing and the importance of it, I hate to leave, Mr. Chairman, but I will just have to ask you to excuse me.

I will be back.

Senator MUSKIE. I understand one of the committee meetings you are attending is one having to do with congressional reorganization. Perhaps you can find a way for a Senator to be at three Senate committee meetings at the same time.

Senator BOGGS. That is one of the things we are going to try to figure out.

Senator MUSKIE. Our first witness this morning is Dr. William H. Stewart, Surgeon General of the United States. It is a pleasure to welcome you.

STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM H. STEWART, SURGEON GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES; ACCOMPANIED BY DR. RICHARD PRINDLE, CHIEF, DIVISION OF PUBLIC HEALTH METHODS, PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE; AND DR. EDWARD BLOMQUIST, ASSISTANT CHIEF, DIVISION OF AIR POLLUTION

Dr. STEWART. Mr. Chairman, it is indeed a pleasure to participate in these hearings on air pollution and other problems of environmental

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contamination. For the record, Mr. Chairman, I want to introduce my two colleagues who are with me this morning.

On my left is Dr. Richard A. Prindle, who has just recently been appointed Chief of the Bureau of State Services. In his new position Dr. Prindle is directly responsible for our programs in environmental occupational and community health. Dr. Prindle is a former Deputy Chief of the Division of Air Pollution and has been Chief of the Division of Public Health Methods.

On my right is Dr. Edward T. Blomquist, Assistant Chief of the Division of Air Pollution, who is concerned particularly with the Division's progress in their program of research on the health effects of air pollution. Dr. Blomquist was, for 10 years, Chief of the Public Health Service's tuberculosis program. He is here today on behalf of Mr. MacKenzie, the Chief of the Division of Air Pollution, who, as you know, is in Europe this week.

My primary purpose here today is to attempt to place in a meaningful perspective some of the problems of environmental health, with special attention to lead contamination. Dr. Prindle will testify on precisely how we plan to improve our knowledge and our control of chemical and radioactive environmental contamination.

It is a difficult task to protect the public health from low levels of environmental contamination which may adversely affect us in subtle ways. One of the reasons this is so, I believe, is that society tends to concentrate its primary resources on those problems which cause obvious injury or disability over very short periods of time.

Many people who would not fail to invest in the most modern and effective firefighting equipment for their communities, often feel no sense of urgency about needed improvements in their air pollution, water pollution, occupational health, or food protection programs. So far, we have failed, and I am speaking of the nation as a whole, to really organize our thoughts, our plans, and our resources in such a way as to insure that we do not, as Secretary Gardner has suggested, we should not, allow the forces of scientific, industrial, and urban growth to determine for us the nature of many of our health programs. Since the inception of public health programs, approximately 100 years ago, the greatest benefits to health have come from environmental controls. These improvements have related primarily to the control of infectious diseases through improvements in sanitation, in the quality of drinking water and milk supplies, and through control of insects and other vectors of disease.

But only in the past few years have we noted a quickened national awareness of the fact that those problems of environmental contamination which are not related to infectious diseases are also very real and growing, and which deserve a far greater degree of attention than they have received heretofore.

This new awareness is occurring against a background of economic, public health, and medical history that has offered more than passive resistance to our painfully new realizations.

As Secretary Gardner pointed out, scientific achievement, industrial growth and technologic development are the hallmark of our era. Our pursuit of these goals has produced such high standards of nutrition, sanitation, housing, working conditions, and so forth, that we have been loathe to believe that our successes could in any way threaten the public health.

Now, however, the fact of environmental hazard is inescapably clear. We must, and we shall, strengthen our ability to cope with this

threat.

The proposed reorganization of the Public Health Service, now before the Congress, would place into a new Bureau certain elements of both disease and environmental control. This arrangement will, I believe, enable us to understand and to influence more effectively those forces which create or contribute to the real and potential hazards of our environment.

I use the word "influence" advisedly, Mr. Chairman. The Public Health Service has never had, does not have, and in all likelihood will never have, the power to directly insure a completely safe, sane, and wholesome environment for all Americans.

We are convinced that many of the national health problems of our era, both physical and mental, can best be brought under control through modifications in the human environment. But we are by no means under the illusion that public health workers alone can modify it. The increasing prevalence in man's environment of radioactive, chemical, and physical hazards, as well as emotional and mental stresses, result from activities which are quite demonstrably worthwhile. We must understand, of course, that we do not need to choose between technological development on the one hand and a healthful environment on the other.

We need and should strive for both.

I feel confident that we can have both. But to achieve it we must avoid an attitude of undue complacency or, at the other end of the spectrum, an attitude of undue alarm or despair. Neither of these views, it seems to me, leads to constructive understanding and action. Dr. Prindle will discuss some of the tentative plans and aspirations of the Public Health Service toward the objective of dealing more effectively with the challenge of environmental contamination. Before he does so, I shall enumerate some of the various contaminants which concern us and discuss in a bit more detail the problem of lead in the environment.

The modern environment is contaminated by many substances whose potential threat to public health has not been widely recognized or adequately studied and evaluated. These contaminants range from such familiar and widely used substances as lead and asbestos to such exotic materials as beryllium and vanadium. They reach the environment as a result of the manufacture, use, and disposal of the increasing quantities of goods and services as demanded by our affluent society.

The number of such contaminants is constantly increasing. And progress in science and technology often results in the creation-and introduction into the environment-of wholly new classes of manmade compounds. A recent report on environmental pollution issued by the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council said that "chemical poisons are being produced in new forms so fast that the toxicologists cannot keep up with them."

A great many examples can be cited to illustrate these trends in environmental contamination. For instance, the materials used as additives to gasoline now include not just the familiar lead antiknock compounds but also various detergents and deposit scavengers as well as nickel and boron compounds.