Urban Air Pollution - Air Pollution and Global Warming: History, Science, and Solutions - page 77

4.1.4. Regulation in the United Kingdom:
1840-1930
Pollution due to industrial growth in the United King-
dom (UK; the 1803 union of Great Britain and North-
ern Ireland) grew significantly enough so that, by the
1840s, legislation was considered to control it. In 1843,
a committee was first set up in London to obtain infor-
mation about pollution from furnaces and heated steam
boilers. Bills were subsequently brought before Parlia-
ment in 1843 and 1845 to limit emissions, but they
were defeated. A third bill was withdrawn in 1846. In
1845, the Railway Clauses Consolidated Act, which
required railway engines to consume their own smoke,
was enacted. The act stated that

set not by state or national agencies, but by municipali-
ties. The first clean air law in the United States may have
been a 1869 ordinance by the city of Pittsburgh out-
lawing the burning of soft coal in locomotives within
the city limits. This law was not enforced. In 1881,
Cincinnati passed a law requiring smoke reductions
and the appointment of a smoke inspector. Again, the
ordinance was not enforced, although the three pri-
mary causes of death in Cincinnati in 1886 - tuber-
culosis, pneumonia, and bronchitis - were all lung
related (Stradling, 1999). In 1881, a smoke reduction
law passed in Chicago .Although this law had the sup-
port of the judiciary, it had little effect.
St. Louis may have been the first city to pass poten-
tially effective legislation. In 1893, the city council first
passed a law forbidding the emission of “dense black or
thick gray smoke” and then a second law creating a com-
mission to appoint an inspector and examine smoke-
related issues. However, the ordinance was overturned
by the Missouri State Supreme Court in 1897. The Court
stated that the ordinance exceeded the “power of the
city under its charter” and was “wholly unreasonable”
(Stradling, 1999). Nevertheless, by 1920, air pollu-
tion ordinances existed in 175 municipalities; by 1940,
this number increased to 200 (Heinsohn and Kabel,
1999).
In 1910, Massachusetts became the first state to reg-
ulate air pollution by enacting smoke control laws for
the city of Boston. The first federal involvement in air
pollution was probably the creation of an Office of Air
Pollution by the Department of Interior's Bureau of
Mines in the early 1900s. This office, the purpose of
which was to control emission of coal smoke, was rel-
atively inactive and was thus eliminated shortly there-
after.
Although early regulations in the United Kingdom
and United States did not reduce pollution, they led to
pollution control technologies, such as technologies for
recycling chlorine from soda ash factory emissions and
the electrostatic precipitator, used for reducing particle
emissions from smokestacks. Inventions unrelated to
air pollution relocated some pollution problems. The
advent of the electric motor in the twentieth century, for
example, centralized sources of combustion at electric
utilities, reducing air pollution at individual factories
that had relied on energy from the steam engine.

. ..every locomotive steam-engine to be used on a rail-
wayshall, if it use coal or other similar fuel emitting
smoke, be constructed on the principle of consuming,
and so as to consume its own smoke; and if any engine
be not so constructed, the company or party using such
engine shall forfeit 5 pounds for every day during which
such engine shall be used on the railway . . . (In Man-
chester, Shefield and Lincolnshire Rail Co. v Wood ,29
Law J. Rep. M.C. 29)

In 1846, a public health bill passed with a clause dis-
cussing the reduction of smoke emissions from furnaces
and boilers. The clause was removed following pressure
by industry. Additional bills failed in 1849 and 1850.
In 1851, an emission clause passed in a sewer bill
for the city of London, and this clause was enforced
through citations. In 1853, a Smoke Nuisance Abate-
ment (Metropolis) Act also passed through Parliament.
This law gave power to the Home Office to appoint an
inspector who would work with the police to reduce
smoke from furnaces in London and from steam ves-
sels near London Bridge. This law was enforced only
after several years of delay. In 1863, Parliament passed
the British Alkali Act, which reduced emissions of
hydrochloric acid gas formed during soap production.
Air pollution legislation also appeared in the Sanitary
Acts of 1858 and 1866, the Public Health Acts of 1875
and 1891, and the Smoke Abatement Act of 1926.

4.1.5. Regulation in the United States:
1869-1940
Most pollution in the United States in the nineteenth
century resulted from the burning of coal for manufac-
turing, home heating, and transportation and wood for
heating and cooking. Early pollution regulations were

4.1.6. London-Type Smog
In 1905, the term smog was first used to describe the
combination of smoke and fog that was visible in several