The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-12-09
AIR OF LONDON WORST IN WORLD ~tt Disintegrates Stone and
 Even Eats Up Iron  ARE 5000 TONS OF SOOT Egyptian Obelisk Aged More in Forty Years in England Than It's 20OO
 in Egypt on Account of T the Bad Air
ARE 5000 TONS OF SOOT

Tondon December s.-tSpecial.1- 1- sIt's no wonder that so many Ameri- cans who come 10 London 10 live break down in health said an English en- gineer who knows the United States well, 10 the writer yesterday, for they come. mostly from cities where the air is comparatively wholesome to the most destructive atmosphere in the whole world-an atmosphere under whose influence stone disintegrates and that even eats up iron
 Tt is because of the atmosphere Of London" he went on, that the new front of Buckingham Palace is to be of Portland stone instead of the Caen va rety, as it is at present. The latter we have found, crumbles away so quickly under the London air that it is almost always in the hands of restorers and painters, whereas Portland stone is less susceptible to the atmosphere and accordingly is almost always chosen nowadays for any new public building.
 The properties of the London air are really amazing" continued the expert. 'It's a blend of smoke and soot-there are six thousand tons of soot hanging
  tains lots of sulphur. and this sulphur, when it meets certain substances, forms sulphuric acid or vitriol.
 VitriOl in Atmosphere
 Tt was the vitriol in the atmosphere that brought the big roof of Charing Cross station down with crash few years ago. The smoke from the loco lives had eaten away the iron, which was not sufficiently painted. Some years ago, too, before the London un- derground railway was electrified by Yerkes, it was a favorite pastime al Cover street station for passengers to go and poke their umbrellas into a cer- tain girder which at one point was al- most as soft as putty.
 In such cases paint is the engineers great standby. In some ways il is more powerful than iron. Many London buildings, in fact, may be said to be practically held together by paint, es- Decially railway stations Since the Charing Cross disaster, all the big London termini are in the painters hands practically all the time. Since the Forth bridge was finished the paint CTS have never stopped working on it. But for the skin of paint, the vitriol in the engine smoke might rot the bridge
 Tt is this substance too, that has made Cleopa atra's Needle, on the em- bankment, show greater signs of age since 1t came to London forty years ago that it did after two thousand years in the clear air of Egypt Probably the difference in the obelisk that stands in Central Park, New York, in cores bonding time is so slight as to be hard 1y noticeable"
 Is Much SOOt
 As a fact one has only to blow ones nose in London and then look al his andkerchief to be painfully aware of the metropolitan soot. Onhand one would say that every building of any age here was of the greyest granite obtainable, yet when one of them is cleaned as a few of them have been lately, it proves that they originally were almost white, and the transform ation is bit startling. In a dissect- ing room they can always tell whether q patient is a Londoner or country are the natural color pink, those of the former are jet black.
 The London soot covers ones face with smudges, and, if you leave any white material in front of an open win dow for an hour or so when you come back you will find it ltered with blacks as they are locally termed. The soot kills vegetation, too, within the >-city limits, unless it is tended most carefully. In the garden inside of the Bank of England the leaves are washed every week with soap and water