It Takes Your Breath Away

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DATE: 1964

LENGTH: 13 minutes

CATEGORY: Educational & Instructional, Sound, Black & White

SCRIPT AND MEDICAL ADVISOR: Dr. Mary Catterall

DIRECTOR: Ken Fensom

PRODUCER/PUBLISHER: British Medical Association and British Life Assurance Trust for Health Education

Summary

Angela Saward from Wellcome Collection, London, delves into the backstory of a film conceived by doctor and activist Mary Catterall. Upon arriving in Leeds, England in the late 1950s with her husband, also a physician, Catterall was shocked at the filthy air, soot-covered homes, and gasping children in this “black town” in England’s industrial north. She treated the ill, developed a mask to improve oxygen absorption for patients with breathing problems, and in her own words, “talked graphically and frequently to doctors, city councilors, trade unions, to administrators, anyone who would listen, and to those who would have preferred not to.” She also worked with student filmmakers to develop It Takes Your Breath Away, a film that graphically illustrates the conditions in Leeds and the devastating human impact of air pollution. At the time the film was made, such pollution was implicated in 30,000 deaths in the UK. In 2021, as this essay is published, comparisons can be made to COVID-19, an illness made more severe when complicated by exposure to harmful air particulates….Read The Essay

Supplementary Materials

Stills from It Takes Your Breath Away

Title screen of "it takes your breath away" air pollution a human problem

old building with credits on top 'script and medical adviser Dr Mary Catterall'

Buildings on each side of a street on a upwards hill

Mans Daily Requirements: Air 15,000 litres, Oxygen 3,000 litres, Water 2 litres

Man’s daily requirements (with air top)
National Library of Medicine #101771068

The black lung (far right) from a townsman, the lighter-colored lungs (middle) from the countryman
National Library of Medicine #101771068

Top view of old apartments from behind with smoke emitting from them.

hand wiping window seal shows the white cloth turned black with dirt

A housewife wipes the window ledge, demonstrating the level of grime present.
National Library of Medicine #101771068

a building that says sunlight contract laundry LTD and behind is a factory with four large tube chimneys coming out of it

top view of old apartment buildings emitting smoke

Large white old styled building with construction in front with a bunch of people walking around and cars, buses busying the street

a child reading a book on the floor to a old man on the couch.

woman using a machine on a man that has his mouth on a stick connected to tube connected to the box like machine.

Still from It Takes Your Breath Away of Catterall in the respiratory clinic testing lung function in a patient, a hospital employee who was formerly an anaesthetic assistant but who had to find a less physically demanding position in the hospital due to his breathing difficulties (the inference is that this was caused by exposure to environmental pollution in the hospital) National Library of Medicine #101771068

sign in front of a old styled buildings that says 'UNDERGROUND' and underneath says 'MANSION HOUSE STATION'

black and white outside of an old building charred with black

a woman picking up her who has dirty pants from a slide.

A mother picks up her child at the bottom of a slide in a playground, finding the light-colored clothing besmirched with grit.
National Library of Medicine #101771068

Still from the film showing hospital equipment covered in grime; a hand helpfully draws an X in the smut [00:09:31], Wellcome Collection.

a mother pushing her child in a stroller in front of a foggy background

Factories above water spraying smoke into the sky

In the Collections of the National Library of Medicine

NLM Rare Books & Early Manuscripts Collection

Air pollution in Donora, Pa: Epidemiology of the Unusual Smog Episode of October 1948

Free Films on Air Pollution [Many of these films are available from the National Archives and Records Administration]

Cover of a pamphlet advertising public health films for group showing.

First page of a pamphlet advertising films on air pollution for public screening.

Page of a pamphlet advertising a film called Pall Over America.

Page of a pamphlet advertising a series of films titled Sources, Effects, and Control of Air Pollution..

Page of a pamphlet advertising a film called This Buisiness of Air.

Page of a pamphlet advertising a film called Take a Deep Breath.

Back cover of a pamphlet advertising Public Health Service films for group showing.

NLM Prints & Photographs Collection

Let’s Fight Air Pollution, 1977
*National Library of Medicine #101584655X41*

An artistic rendering of a town with smog blowing along a bend in a river seen from a flowered hillside. — Donora, Pa. 1949 #40 Artist’s rendition of smog episode of 1948
*National Library of Medicine #101450758*

Donora, Pa. – 1949 #7 Riverboat adds to air pollution on Monongahela River
*National Library of Medicine #101450738*

A row of smokestacks along a railroad track in an industrial area. — Donora, Pa. 1949 #8 American Steel & Wire Co. Plant
*National Library of Medicine #101450739*

Posters with pictures/drawings of lungs — Hu xi xi tong, Respiratory system
National Library of Medicine #101560202

Related Resources from the National Library of Medicine

See current information on air pollution from MedlinePlus and NLM Environmental Health & Toxicology resources.

Medical Research and Control in Air Pollution [American Journal of Public Health, May 1952]

General Atmospheric Pollution, Los Angeles “Smog” by Charles R. Senn, Bureau of Sanitation, Los Angeles, July 1948

Letters from readers on the usefulness of gauze in the nostrils to ward off smog, British Medical Journal, Nov. 7, 1953.

External Resources

Articles and Websites

A series of maps relating COVID-19 deaths and cases and Nitrogen dioxide, Nitrogen oxide, and Ozon levels in regions of the UK. — Graphic Abstract from “Links between air pollution and COVID-19 in England,” 2021
*Environmental Pollution*

“Links between air pollution and COVID-19 in England” by Marco Travaglio et al. in Environmental Pollution, January 2021.

The Great Smog of 1952 from the United Kingdom’ national weather service, known as the MetOffice

Death in the Air feature from National Public Radio

Orphan Film Symposium 2020: Climate, Water, Migration. Essay author Angela Saward presented a talk on It Takes Your Breath Away at this event. Dozens of other rare titles dealing with the environment were also presented at the international conference.

Other Related Resources

Learn more about disparities in the impact of air pollution, how to check air quality in your area, and children and the environment.