there, that they feel will cost tens and tens of thousands of lives in the last half of this decade.

Mr. ABRAMS. Yes, we had a specific example in the year 1966 in New York City where I think some 186 people lost their lives over a 24-hour period due to these temperature inversions.

So clearly we must deal in a very bold, dramatic, and effective way and, if industry is not complying, and dragging its feet, then we will have to take very stringent methods.

And one method may well be shutting them down if they don't comply.

Mr. SCHEUER. I used to be in the housing industry before I was a Congressman. I am aware of an FHA practice, if an FHA developer violates any standard of the FHA if the discriminates or fails to maintain the buildings properly, they not only can penalize him on a particular building but they can deny him all future financing from the FHA.

They can put him on the gray list and in effect deny him Government benefits that they can control.

What would you think about a policy on the part of the Federal Government where, if a large industry is a polluter and is found guilty by some judicial process of polluting, that until that condition was cured the Federal Government would say, "We are not going to give you any more Federal benefits"?

Now to many businesses that enjoy all kinds of direct and indirect Federal subsidies it seems to me that would be a very, very effective sanction.

Mr. ABRAMS. I think these are the kinds of proposals, Congressman Scheuer, that are necessary to put teeth into the rhetoric that we have been hearing over this past week.

One of the questions raised by commentators who observed the Earth Day or Earth Week activists around the country, is th's just going to be a passing fancy, was this a lot of rhetoric and, I think some have indicated, a mere catharsis for a short period of time?

And the key is whether or not we are going to follow through with legislation that is going to have great impact and the kinds of proposals that you have indicated I think are the ones which indicate a degree of seriousness and earnestness on the part of our Government to tell major industrial polluters, whoever they are and where they may be, that we mean business, that we find that we have a critical problem affecting the people of our country and we are going to take drastic steps and action to correct it.

Mr. SCHEUER. Thank you very, very much.

Congressman Reid?

Mr. REID. Borough President Abrams, I certainly want to thank you for your thoughtful testimony. I think your concept of an environmental situation room is creative and very worth studying and implementing.

I would like to ask you in the broader aspect of the problem in the Bronx, are you aware that the Federal Government has turned down New York State AEC generators for this area?

Mr. ABRAMS. No; I wasn't.

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Mr. REID. They have because the Federal Government has determined that the standards set by the State could constitute a danger and be not fully protective of health.

Specifically they are concerned about particulate matter in the air and sulfur dioxide levels.

What do you think can be done about some of the major polluters fairly promptly, that is to say, the internal combustion engine, lead in gasoline, the water pollution problems, that comes from failure to have tertiary plants, in some cases not even primary or secondary plants?

Our water is becoming increasingly polluted and our air is becoming dangerously saturated with particles; as you have seen, the death rate due to emphysema has increased a hundred percent in the last 10 years and Bronx County is up 200 percent.

What do you think you can do as borough president of the Bronx on this particular problem?

Mr. ABRAMS. First, Congressman, I find your remarks quite interesting, because clearly in New York State standards were not found to be a sufficient level by the Federal Government.

Then it underscores and highlights the magnitude of our problems because New York is alleged to be one of the forerunners of the 50 States in setting up standards, rigid ones and allegedly rigid ones for protection of the public against pollution.

So it only indicates the scope of the problem that we have.

I think as Bronx borough president there are very grave limitations within the office of dealing effectively with it because this has to be done on the legislative level, either through the city council, the State legislature, the Senate, and the Assembly of the State of New York and the Congress.

And I think the kinds of proposals Congressman Scheuer was mentioning earlier indeed are the kind that have to shake up the major polluters.

I think we have to rethink in dramatic terms the way we are moving in our society, larger and larger automobiles, high-powered engines.

Maybe we just have to think of prohibiting automobiles that go faster than 60 miles an hour. There is no earthly reason why we have to have a 325 horsepower automobile.

The speed and carnage on our highways-certainly I am a critic of war, but when one reflects that more than 50,000 people are killed every year on our highways and the total death casualty in Vietnam is 40,000, I think two and a half million people are injured every year on our highways, yet we are not doing anything about it.

Let's mandate that no automobile engine should be built that can produce a speed in excess of 60 miles an hour and don't have calibrations on the speedometers in excess of that.

And this relates to the environmental problem because I am told and I believe that, if you want a high-powered engine you must have a greater input of lead content.

Mr. REID. What about banning lead? I have put in a bill to ban lead by a date certain.

Mr. ABRAMS. I think it is an admirable bill and I think it should be moved quickly because it is my understanding that the lead emis sion from exhaust is a major problem.

We have in the city of New York a lead poisoning problem of youngsters derived from eating of peeling paint, and we also have the problem

Mr. SCHEUER. Let me interrupt you.

This is a different problem. This is not a problem of lead being the pollutant. The problem you are addressing yourself to, the problem that the lead provides is that it prevents the antipollutant systems from working.

It itself is not a pollutant and it itself is not a problem but it prevents the antipollutant devices from cutting the other pollutants out of the air.

This is not the same kind of problem that you have in mind.

Mr. ABRAMS. I think it is a dual problem. I think your analysis is absolutely correct and I am also told by the citywide chairman of the committee against lead poisoning that it creates levels of lead within your body which has great physiological effect against functioning. Mr. REID. As a practical matter, an automobile turns out a hundred million particles per second. Every time you are vaporizing, you are smoking the lead that's in your lungs.

Doctors don't know exactly what to think about it, but today spending a day in New York is the equivalent, I am told, of smoking a package of cigarettes.

What steps can you take on your own authority as borough president of the Bronx against pollutants?

Mr. ABRAMS. On my own authority none other than public outcry. As I indicate, it is the legislators of the various levels that really have the power.

Mr. REID. So you would have to get the board of estimate and the city to act?

Mr. ABRAMS. Yes; it's been my hope that through the environmental situation room in the borough president's office I would be able to focus attention on it and get some support of the enforcers and hope for further legislation.

Mr. REID. Well, I thank you very much for coming. We are very interested in what you have said here.

Thank you very much.

Mr. SCHEUER. Thank you very, very much.

Next I would like to question Kevin McGrath, Kevin Harvey, and Rory Callahan.

Do we have two Kevins or a Kevin and Roy?

Mr. McGRATH. I am Kevin McGrath. This is Rory Callahan.

Mr. SCHEUER. We are very happy to have you. Kevin McGrath, Rory Callahan, and Kevin Harvey were organizers of Earth Day ceremonies at Fordham University, at which I had the honor to be the lead speaker.

There was a very beautiful, moving ceremony on the outside steps of the main building at Fordham with many, many hundreds of students and faculty members in attendance.

I found it a very beautiful and moving occasion. I think you did a remarkable organizing job.

You showed great concern and leadership for the problems of environment, typical of college leadership across the country, and I am very happy, too, that you can be with us here today.

Congressman Reid?

Mr. REID. I just want to thank you for being here.

STATEMENT OF KEVIN MCGRATH AND RORY CALLAHAN, EARTH DAY ORGANIZERS AT FORDHAM UNIVERSITY

Mr. McGRATH. I have a prepared speech.

Mr. SCHEUER. Why don't we have the speech printed in full, the prepared speech, and you can comment?

Mr. McGRATH. I would like very much to read it.

Mr. SCHEUER. Go ahead.

Mr. McGRATH. I wrote on the front of a pamphlet that was distributed at Fordham on Earth Day that the environmental crisis represented a struggle against ourselves. In Congressman Scheuer's address at Fordham he noted this statement and said that he felt it was a struggle within ourselves rather than against ourselves. I agree that it is a struggle within ourselves; but even more it is a struggle against ourselves, as I shall explain.

The root of this struggle, I feel, lies in our Judeo-Christian values, because it is these values that have shaped this Nation into the condition it is in today. These values hold that the earth is here for us to use as we see fit; the earth is just a temporary home and therefore only serves a temporary purpose. It is obvious today that we are living up to those values. We have been and are continuing to destroy the environment in hundreds, if not thousands, of ways. Just about everything modern man undertakes has some destructive effect on the environment, including the propagating of his own species. This is where the struggle within ourselves lies; our values have to change, and this is possible only through a social revolution.

At this point I would like to quote Mr. Kingman Brewster, Jr., president of Yale University, when he addressed a newspaper group this past week. Mr. Brewster said, "the malaise, the disenchantment with life and its progress, is greater now than a year ago among most American students" on college and university campuses. Students, Mr. Brewster said, "see their leaders using-the alleged complacency of 'middle America' as an excuse for evading the challenges which matter most." He reported "a widespread sense that no one in the Government Establishment is moved to urgent, controversial action."

Citing frustration over "the disparagement of dissent and nonconformity," the Yale president asserted that "potentially constructive critics, skeptics, and heretics-what I would call 'considerate radicals are being driven into the ranks of those engaged destructivists who would tear down the system."

Professor Wrenn of Oxford, speaking of the Anglo-Saxon tradition said that there is a "fundamental English preference for gradual rather than sudden change; for incomplete rather than consummated revolution." Mr. Brewster went on to say, "the ability of universities and newspapers to defend and utilize their freedom will have much to do with the ability of the young to keep their faith in freedom.

It is this gradual change that most concerned environmentalists are seeking. They want to keep their faith in freedom, but it is becoming increasingly difficult. "If the country does not rediscover its own sons and daughters, no amount of law and order or crisis management will make much difference in the long run."

Now I go to the struggle against ourselves. I see this as a struggle against technology, which we have created. This is a cancerous and rampant technology that is beginning to control our lives; and in so doing, it is destroying our environment. Take for example the supersonic transport, SST. It is being developed solely for national prestige; yet it alone could create environmental problems that could destroy the world. The problem with the SST, known as the greenhouse effect, could cause the upper atmosphere to become polluted. Thus the atmosphere would retain much of the sun's heat, and cause the polar caps to melt thus flooding coastal areas. We truthfully do not know if this will happen, yet we continue on; blindly lead by technology. Will we ever learn? What about the Santa Barbara oil leak? We did not learn there. We had to have another serious oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. REID. I would like to interrupt. May I say that your point on the SST is well taken.

I have called the attention of Russell Train and the President's Environmental Council to this specific point because I think we are learning that what is in the biosphere will remain there forever.

Mr. McGRATH. About the ship Torrey Canyon as a polluter.

Mr. SCHEUER. To interrupt there I think the amount of pesticides. that could have been caried in a ship like the Torrey Canyon would have killed the fish for many, many hundreds of miles.

Mr. McGRATH. It was estimated that the whole North AtlanticMr. SCHEUER. Yes. The entire North Atlantic, perhaps a radius of a thousand miles, would have had a devastating effect upon the ecology of that ocean body.

Mr. CALLAHAN. I would like to add there is a plant, phytoplankton in the surface waters of the North Atlantic that provides not just 70 percent of the water there but the oxygen we breathe comes from the water there and, if a catastophe occurs there it would be like a gas effect in the Northern Hemisphere.

Mr. SCHEUER. Right. Please proceed.

Mr. McGRATH. What if the ship Torrey Canyon had been carrying pesticides instead of crude oil. Will we ever learn? These are examples of where technology has extended beyond our control; now it controls

us.

But I feel that the perfect example of technology for technology's sake is in the nuclear power reactors. Supposedly these reactors represent a technological advancement, but they may represent the doom. of mankind. They create radioactive wastes which there is no way of disposing of; and they create thermal pollution which destroys the ecology of our rivers and lakes.

By being built on the banks of rivers and lakes, the reactors despoil some of our most beautiful natural resources. Finally these reactors give off radiation and we are not absolutely sure how much radiation a man can absorb before he is harmed. Fossil fueled generators are far more efficient and use 50 percent less water for cooling.