Secret plot to play down risks of air pollution

Harold Macmillan's government put pressure on scientists to play down the dangers of air pollution.

Official documents unearthed by a scientific historian reveal that the Medical Research Council (MRC), which had just begun to establish the link between lung cancer and smoking, was asked to modify public statements about air pollution after intervention from the Government.

Virginia Berridge, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, studied papers of cabinet committees that met several years after the Great London Smog of 1952, when 4,000 people died from respiratory disease caused by air pollution.

In 1957, the MRC planned to issue a statement saying that although smoking was a significant cause of lung cancer, up to 30 per cent of cases might be caused by air pollution.

However, the cabinet committee on lung cancer feared that the statement would cause severe political embarrassment by emphasising the link with air pollution and asked the council to reconsider its public position. On 31 May 1957, the MRC issued a modified version of its statement saying that although air pollution did play a role in lung cancer, it was a "relatively minor one in comparison with cigarette smoking".

Professor Berridge said that the readiness of supposedly independent scientists to emphasise smoking over air pollution represented a wider shift away from the concept of health related to an individual's environment and workplace towards one focused on that individual's responsibility for his or her health as epitomised by smoking.

Professor Berridge will present her findings todayat the Brunei Gallery lecture theatre in London.