LIKE most people who work in L-big, sealed office towers, our staff in New York's Time and Life Building has long felt safe from air pollution inside our air-conditioned offices. Most of us had a rude shock when it turned out, during research for this week's cover story, that a great deal of the contaminating stuff in the air outside comes right in through the air-conditioning filters. While this discovery was disillusioning, it only increased the conviction with which our writers and editors prepared our story on the polluted atmosphere.

A big part of the story, we felt, was visual, but we did not want to use stock pictures, or even medium-old ones. We wanted to show what the situation is like right now. So Picture Editors Charles Jackson and Arnold Drapkin dispatched 23 photographers, gave them three days to record the grimy scenes in the air. In the U.S. and abroad, the photographers shot 160 rolls of film and shipped them back to Senior Editor Marshall Loeb, in charge of TIME'S color projects, and Researcher Andrea Svedberg. From the mass of transparencies, the editors selected the best and most representative for the eight-page color section. The photographers worked mostly from rooftops or light aircraft; Larry Lee, who shot the cover picture, explored the Los Angeles smog in a helicopter. One photographer in Chicago, shooting through a large telephoto lens, experienced a few difficult moments when he was mistaken for a Peeping Tom by suspicious cops.

For many of the people involved, the assignment was marked by other hazards: much wheezing and sneezing. Peter Bird Martin, who edited the story, set out for the office ready to start his cover week with a clear eye and an open mind, but caught an outrageous chunk of Manhattan soot in his eye. Writer Leon Jaroff and Researcher Sydnor Vanderschmidt were also afflicted. "The more we got into the story," says Jaroff, "the more we coughed. Psychosomatic, no doubt."

IN a final flurry, the 89th Congress concluded an unparalleled legislative record, enacting all but one of the following:

A. A near-record $58 billion defense appropriation.

B. A new civil rights bill with the controversial open-housing clause.

C. A $4 billion federal college-aid measure.

D. A $3.7 billion anti-water-pollution bill.

This is one of 100 questions in the 1967 edition of the TIME Current Affairs Test. For the past 31 years, it has helped students in schools and colleges throughout the U.S. and Canada to review their knowledge of the news.

This month, some 2,500,000 of them will again be taking the test, which is available to TIME readers at cost--100 a copy, 20 copies for $1--in a new and larger format. Write to: TIME Current Affairs Test, Box 870, Radio City Station, New York 10019. Teachers outside the U.S. and Canada may write TIME Education Program, 5 Ottho Heldringstraat, Amsterdam 18, The Netherlands. Incidentally, if your answer to the question above was B, you're on your way to a good score.

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