THE CATALYTIC CONVERTER

Only recently endorsed by the Environmental Protection Agency as an automobile pollution control, may itself be a health hazard. Platinum and palladium particles from the device, it is feared, can pour from a car's exhaust and lodge in human lungs causing ... well, nobody knows yet but scientists do know that platinum is toxic. The EPA has launched a $1.5-million crash program to investigate possible dangers of the very catalytic converter which the agency just approved. The only trouble, of course, is that the results of this rush research work won't be compiled until well after hundreds of thousands of the devices are already installed on 1975 automobiles.