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Show FOGS THAT KILL Late on an October afternoon in 1948, a deadly fog of moisture-borne poisonous industrial gases and "aerosole," or tiny gas-coated solid particles carried in smoke, settled on the small Pennsylvania town of Donora. Before the "big smog" lifted, this man-made cloud of destruction had dealt death to 20 people and made nearly 6,000 others ill. It was the first time in U. S. history that it could be stated with scientific positiveness that human beings were killed by air pollution. But every night, and particu-' larly on week-ends, a far deadlier dead-lier man-made fog descends on America's streets and highways. It is the fog in the brain of the drunken driver, the fog that kills and injures hundreds before be-fore it lifts with the dawn of each new day. At Donora there were feder-, feder-, al, state and municipal investigations investi-gations of the "big smog" disaster. dis-aster. Months later, when the inquiries were over, there came a pronouncement from the United States Surgeon General: "Donora proved to us that smog no longer is just a nuisance it is a menace to health." As a result, industrial communities have since endeavored to clean up pollution of the air by factory fac-tory smoke to prevent a recurrence recur-rence of a man-made fog that can prove so deadly. But what about the persistent plague of foggy drivers on the highways? Drinking drivers, safety specialists now agree, are an even greater menace to public safety than official records rec-ords indicate. They are one of the major causes of increased fatalities and injuries in traffic accidents in recent years and are entitled to neither sympathy nor mercy. Official records do not show just how many lives were needlessly need-lessly sacrificed because of alcohoVclouded driving. It is known, however, that more than 6,000 drivers had been drinking before they became involved in-volved in fatal accidents last year, and that another 2,000 pedestrians killed in traffic were in an alcoholic haze at the time. Thus, a toll of 8,000 to 10,000 lives in one year may be charged to drivers and pedes- j trians who had been drinking. Had 10,000 lives been lost in Donoras in 1951, the nation would be hard at work attacking attack-ing the causes of such man-made man-made tragedies. Every community com-munity in the nation would be in a state of terror. Yet, the practice of drinking-and-driving continues to increase, and each day drinking drivers claim more victims than an isolated Donora that alarmed the nation. na-tion. Strict law enforcement and stern court penalties are needed need-ed to clear the highway of alcohol al-cohol befogged motorists. An aroused public opinion can help, too, by making it unfashionable unfash-ionable to drive after drinking. |