Particulate Air Pollution and Mortality — Clearing the Air

Abstract

In the years after World War II, several episodes of severe air pollution in the United States and Britain aroused public concern about the effects on health of air pollutants produced by burning fossil fuels. The most dramatic, the London fog of December 1952, caused thousands of deaths. Responding to concern about air quality in the United States, Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970. This act directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to identify pollutants that“may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health and welfare” and to issue criteria for air quality that, “allowing an adequate margin of . . .