Week's Watch

> Long before he died last month, Los Angeles Tycoon John C. Tyler began to worry about the environment, which was noticeably deteriorating even in his exclusive residential neighborhood. "We used to look up from our home in Bel Air and see Conrad Hilton's house," says his widow. "No more. Half the time it isn't visible because of the smog." To provide more incentive for improving the environment, Tyler --an ex-farm boy who went on to co-found the Farmers Insurance Group--included an unusual provision in his will. He bequeathed $5,000,000 to fund the Tyler Award, an international environmental equivalent of the Nobel Prize. The winner, chosen annually, will receive $150,000.

The award will be presented to the person who has done the most to improve the environment. A panel of nine university leaders will pick the first winner in October, and California's Pepperdine University will administer the fund.

> During the winter months in Minneapolis, it is an ordeal for office workers to venture into the frigid streets on their way to lunch, shop or bank in other buildings. Now the ordeal is diminishing, thanks to a growing network of glass-enclosed, heated skyways linking downtown buildings at the second-story level. An estimated 200,000 pedestrians per day are using the ten skyways already completed; they are able to walk blocks without having to don a coat against the raw Minnesota weather. Though the skyways cost up to $300,000 each, businessmen are so impressed with their popularity that they plan to build a web that will eventually connect 64 downtown blocks.

>Any city resident who thinks that air pollution, like rain, can be avoided by going indoors should think again. A ten-month federal study released last week revealed that apartment dwellers and office workers in buildings without central air conditioning are exposed to almost as much harmful carbon monoxide as people on the streets. Last winter, for example, the carbon monoxide level exceeded federal standards 47% of the time both inside and outside one test location. During the study the researchers investigated the air quality in buildings occupying the "air rights" over traffic-filled city streets. They took continuous samples in two tall New York City structures. One, towering above the relatively low buildings in uptown Manhattan, straddles a multilaned highway leading to the George Washington Bridge; the other is a skyscraper in the highly congested midtown area. Even though many more cars traveled under the uptown building than passed the midtown building every day, the carbon monoxide levels were higher in the conventional tower. Reason: the carbon monoxide, which winds readily sweep away from solitary skyscrapers, is trapped in the ill-ventilated, canyon-like midtown streets and then seeps into adjacent buildings.

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