EDITORIAL
Editor James J Morgan WASHINGTON EDITORIAL STAFF Managing Editor Stanton S Miller Assistant Editor Lena C Gibney Assistant Editor Julian Josephson M A N USCRl PT REV1EW I NG Manager Katherine I Biggs Editorial Assistant David Hanson MANUSCRIPT EDITING Associate Production Manager Charlotte C Sayre GRAPHICS AND PRODUCTION Head Bacil Gutley Manager Leroy L Corcoran Art Director Norman Favin Artist Gerald M Quinn Advisory Board: P. L. Brezonik. David Jenkins. Charles R . O'Melia. John H. Seinfeld, John W . Winchester Published by the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY 1155 16th Street N W Washington D C 20036 Executive Director Robert W Cairns PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND COM M U N I CAT1ON D i V I SI ON Director Richard L Kenvon ADVERTlSl NG MANAGEMENT Centcorn Ltd For offices and advertisers see page 866 Please send research manuscripts to Manuscript Reviewing, feature manuscripts to Managing Editor. For author's guide and editorial policy. see June 1974 issue, page 549, or write Katherine I Biggs, Manuscript Reviewing Office. ES&T
This public form of addiction It's your play. Cards? No. But, it's a card-like game, this business of transportation. Getting from here to there. From home to work and vice versa, vacation, weekend trips, and the lot. Take your car most of the time, don't you? It's American automobile addiction at its best. Few cared until pollution was upon us, as it is now. This issue of ES&T is all about cleanup of transportation, mainly cars. In a special report, ES&T's Gibney points out that a majority of domestic automakers have opted for the catalytic converter, that technological answer for changing noxious emissions into innocuous ones, for their 1975 cars. On the other hand, if you are stuck with that old car for another year or so, then retrofit information from MECA, the Manufacturers of Emissions Control Association, is helpful. One Feature author points out that in 66 air quality control regions in the US.-from Albuquerque, N.M., to Washington, D.C.-at least one of the air standards, those measures to protect the public health, is exceeded. These regions also contain 60% of the nation's population. So, transportation control strategies-reduced driving, mass transportation, carpooling, and the like-are needed here. Another Feature author questions whether the public really knows what cleanup from cars will cost. He finds that the cost could be as high as $20 billion a year, and the fuel penalty translates to the loss of several hundred thousand jobs in a gasoline-starved economy. In some states, inspection and maintenance programs are in order, programs that will keep all car emissions below a prescribed level. New Jersey leads the nation here: two other states are contemplating similar programs, and more than 20 others are thinking about them. Testing of prototype vehicles before the '75 cars become available this month is another aspect of the game. Here a PAT report dwells on the key to reliable emissions data-a glass-impregnated filter. Without this development, reliable emissions testing data for the new cars simply could not have been attained. It all boils down to a number of options-new car, old car, mass transit, busing, carpooling. It's your choice; it's your play: it's your air as well as ours.
V o l u m e 8. N u m b e r 9. S e p t e m b e r 1974
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