Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Parliament appointed several committees in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries to investigate the
arising from smoke pollution, including: the
Taylor Committee on Steam Engines and Furnaces, 1819
'
nuisances
'
1820; the Mackinnon
Committees on Smoke Prevention, 1843 and 1845; the Select Committee on Smoke
Nuisance Abatement, 1887; and the Newton Committee on Smoke and Noxious
Vapours, 1914 and 1920
-
1921. And both municipal and national government
enacted a raft of legislation to deal with the
-
, such as: the anti-
smoke clauses in Local Acts, passed in Derby 1825, Leeds 1842, Manchester 1844,
and elsewhere from the 1840s onwards; the Smoke Nuisance Abatement
(Metropolis) Act, 1853; the anti-smoke clause in the Public Health Act, 1875; and
the Public Health (Smoke Abatement) Act, 1926. However, as smoke was closely
associated with jobs and economic well-being, and because it was not possible for
contemporary physicians to prove conclusively that air pollution caused ill-health,
there was little political or public support for tough action to tackle the problem.
The evidence of anti-smoke
'
smoke nuisance
'
to parliamentary committees largely went
unheeded; and successive anti-smoke laws were poorly drafted and weakly
enforced.
29
They all contained the following
'
experts
'
aws:
'
'
'
'
An ambiguous
best practicable means
clause. The
best practicable means
of
'
'
smoke abatement did not mean
using the latest
technology. Rather, it meant the abatement apparatus that industrialists felt they
could install at a cost they believed reasonable. Businessmen who argued in
court that they had done their utmost to curtail excessive air pollution from their
plant by employing technological measures that were commensurate with their
the best available means
nancial means, however rudimentary, were usually assured of a sympathetic
hearing.
Insigni
cant
nes. Legislation introduced to combat smoke
—
both local and
national measures
—
only imposed low
nes on offenders, effectively providing
Britain
'
s industrialists with a
'
license to pollute
'
.
Exemptions. The failure to regulate emissions from domestic
replaces, which
were major polluters of city air, when it was possible to reduce smoke signif-
icantly by burning fossil fuels in closed stoves. No government of the day was
willing to incur the public
s displeasure by taking action to interfere with their
freedom to enjoy the warmth of a traditional open coal
'
re. Metal, brick, glass,
pottery and other trades that used heating power intermittently were also exempt
from early anti-smoke legislation.
s factory towns many of the magistrates who dealt with
smoke pollution cases were local industrialists, or they had close connections to
local businessmen. Before the Second World War, weak and poorly enforced
legislation had little effect in cutting smoke pollution and improving air quality in
British cities.
30
Moreover, in Britain
'
29
Ashby and Anderson (
1981
) and Mosley (
2007
,
2008
).
30
Mosley (
2007
,
2008
) and Ashby and Anderson (
1981
).
