Measurement of Smoke and A Study of Its Effects Upon Health in Knoxville

A survey of the soot fall in Knoxville was made during the year 1927 by Mertin F. Quinn and Albert H. Cooper while working on their theses at the University of Tennessee. There had been no important effort to decrease the amount of smoke in Knoxville up to that time. A Smoke Abatement Bureau was established in 1928, and after several months of work, chiefly in industrial plants, it was desirable to see what effect certain isolated reductions in smoke had had on the average soot fall.

With the object of obtaining this data, a second survey was started February 1, 1929 by Robert C. Burton and was continued to May 1, 1930 by George R. Calhoun. They, too, submitted their results in theses at The University of Tennessee. This work has been varried out for the remainder of 1930 and the results of the surveys, together with certain related meteorological date for the three years, are presented in the following pages.