STUDIES of air contamination in the Los Angeles area show that even if all the hydrocarbons coming from sources other than automobile exhausts were removed from the atmosphere, there would still be sufficient concentration of hydrocarbons in certain areas to cause eye irritation and crop damage.
Thus, it is clear that hydrocarbons must be removed from the exhaust gases of automobiles -and with an extremely high efficiency.
The Air Pollution Control District recommends that engineers strive for a 90% removal under conditions of operation experienced in heavy traffic.
This paper is the first in a Symposium on Air Pollution. Discussion of this and the other papers in the Symposium is at the end of the last paper, and starts on p. 618.