Monoxide Rides the Freeways

Dutch-born Biochemist Arie Jan Haagen-Smit of Caltech, a Los Angeles city consultant on air pollution, has been doing his research while riding the Los Angeles-Pasadena freeway. His ancient Plymouth rigged with a portable carbon monoxide detector, he has sampled the tainted atmosphere at all times of day. As far out as Pasadena, the detector shows fairly clean air, but as soon as Haagen-Smit hits the freeway the deadly monoxide begins to climb. Quickly it passes 30 parts per million, which California smog authorities consider serious pollution.

Stink at Interchanges. Saturdays are not so bad; the cruising sniffer can drive all the way downtown without seeing the needle push above 40 p.p.m. During weekday rush hours, though, it sometimes hits a peak of 120 p.p.m. "It is most exciting," says Haagen-Smit. "You get behind another car, and the pointer goes way up, especially where you have a slowdown of traffic." Top readings come at the nightmarish interchanges, where curling roadways tangle like spaghetti on a fork and hundreds of car engines pant in frustration. "Tunnels and depressions concentrate the carbon monoxide," says the professor, "but in that interchange area it's really stinking."

Carbon monoxide is a cumulative poison that has a strong affinity for the hemoglobin in the blood, putting it out of action and reducing the blood's power to carry oxygen to the body's tissues. "If you breathe 30 p.p.m. for eight hours," says Haagen-Smit, "5% of the oxygen capacity of your blood is taken away." Exposure to the highest concentrations found on the freeways knocks out the same amount of hemoglobin in one hour, and Haagen-Smit believes that 5% loss is too much, especially for car commuters with heart ailments, emphysema or other respiratory troubles.

No Filters Work. Nothing much can be done at present about carbon monoxide except to stay out of heavy traffic. Greater Los Angeles has almost no transportation except private cars. "No filters work against carbon monoxide," says Haagen-Smit, "and closing the windows may be dangerous." He reports that in one tightly closed test car with a faulty exhaust, the interior carbon monoxide jumped to 200 p.p.m. He hopes a little improvement will come next fall from new cars equipped with devices to reduce carbon monoxide in their exhausts.

Worst affected by exhaust fumes are the eager tailgaters who cause the many-car pile-ups for which the free ways are famous. "The way to get the biggest dose," says Haagen-Smit, "is to keep as close as one can to the car ahead of you. The fellow who does that gets the most carbon monoxide, also the most lead, oxides of nitrogen, carcinogens, everything."

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