The Clean Air Act 1956 was an
Act of the
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprema ...
enacted principally in response to
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
's
Great Smog of 1952
The Great Smog of London, or Great Smog of 1952, was a severe air pollution event that affected London, England, in December 1952. A period of unusually cold weather, combined with an anticyclone and windless conditions, collected airborne poll ...
. It was sponsored by the
Ministry of Housing and Local Government
The Ministry of Housing and Local Government was a United Kingdom government department formed following the Second World War, covering the areas of housing and local government.
It was formed, as the Ministry of Local Government and Planning, ...
in England and the Department of Health for Scotland, and was in effect until 1993.
The Act introduced a number of measures to reduce
air pollution
Air pollution is the contamination of air due to the presence of substances in the atmosphere that are harmful to the health of humans and other living beings, or cause damage to the climate or to materials. There are many different types ...
. Primary among them was mandated movement toward
smokeless fuels, especially in high-population ‘smoke control areas’ to reduce
smoke pollution and
sulphur dioxide
Sulfur dioxide (IUPAC-recommended spelling) or sulphur dioxide (traditional Commonwealth English) is the chemical compound with the formula . It is a toxic gas responsible for the odor of burnt matches. It is released naturally by volcanic activ ...
from household fires. The Act also included measures that reduced the emission of gases, grit, and dust from chimneys and smoke-stacks.
The Act was a significant milestone in the development of a legal framework to protect the environment. It was modified by later enactments, including the
Clean Air Act 1968
The Clean Air Act 1956 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom enacted principally in response to London's Great Smog of 1952. It was sponsored by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government in England and the Department of Health ...
.
The Act was repealed by the Clean Air Act 1993.
Background
London had long been noted for its
pea soup fog
Pea soup fog (also known as a pea souper, black fog or killer fog) is a very thick and often yellowish, greenish or blackish fog caused by air pollution that contains soot particulates and the poisonous gas sulphur dioxide. This very thick smog ...
. In 1880, meteorologist
Rollo Russell
Francis Albert Rollo Russell (11 July 1849 – 30 March 1914) was an English meteorologist and scientific writer. Russell was also an alternative cancer treatment advocate who promoted the idea that cancer is caused by excessive consumption of m ...
wrote an influential pamphlet, ''London Fogs'', noting that "numerous deaths occur in the course of the year from smoke-fogs, not unusually thick, producing or increasing diseases of the lungs".
London had seen a succession of acts and rules over the centuries to improve its air—such as the
Smoke Nuisance Abatement (Metropolis) Acts 1853 and 1856 and the
Public Health (London) Act 1891
The Public Health (London) Act 1891 (54 & 55 Vict c 76) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which extended access to Metropolitan Asylums Board hospitals to those who were not eligible for poor relief.
The act transferred responsib ...
. However, despite the link between air pollution and health being well understood by the late 19th century, such efforts had not proven to be effective public health measures.
The Great Smog
When the "
Great Smog
The Great Smog of London, or Great Smog of 1952, was a severe air pollution event that affected London, England, in December 1952. A period of unusually cold weather, combined with an anticyclone and windless conditions, collected airborne poll ...
" fell over the city in December 1952 the effects were unprecedented: More than 4,000 people are thought to have died in the immediate aftermath, raising public concern, with fog so thick it stopped trains, cars, and public events. A further 8,000 died in following weeks and months. Today, the total death toll is believed to be around 12,000.
It was apparent that pollution was a real and deadly problem, and the smog's effects were a notable milestone in the modern
environmental movement
The environmental movement (sometimes referred to as the ecology movement), also including conservation and green politics, is a diverse philosophical, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues. Environmentalists a ...
.
The Beaver Committee
The government appointed a Committee on Air Pollution chaired by the civil engineer
Sir Hugh Beaver
Sir Hugh Eyre Campbell Beaver, KBE (4 May 1890 – 16 January 1967) was an English-South African civil engineer, industrialist, and founder of the ''Guinness World Records'' (then known as Guinness Book of Records).
Biography
Beaver spe ...
to investigate the problem in London. It reported in 1954 on the social and economic costs of air pollution and stated that clean air was then as important as clean water had been in the mid-nineteenth century. The committee proposed that domestic
coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.
Coal is formed when dea ...
should be replaced by
coke, and that greater reliance should be placed on other ‘smokeless’ fuels such as electricity and gas. Yet, each of the industries that produced smokeless fuels – coke and gas works and electricity generating stations – burned coal to produce the ‘smokeless’ fuel. For example, the six million tons of coal a year that were converted to coke in North-East England in the late nineteenth century emitted some two million tons of volatile matter such as
carbonic and sulphurous acid. Therefore, air pollution was not being reduced so much as transferred from the area of consumption to the area of production.
The electricity industry
The electricity generating industry was a major consumer of coal and contributor to atmospheric pollution. The Beaver committee used the example of the recently commissioned
Bankside power station
Bankside Power Station is a decommissioned electricity generating station located on the south bank of the River Thames, in the Bankside area of the Borough of Southwark, London. It generated electricity from 1891 to 1981. It was also used as ...
in London to recommend the widespread adoption of flue-gas desulphurisation for all new power stations in urban areas.
It claimed that this would be practicable and cost effective if it added no more than 0.06 d. to 0.07 d. to the cost of a unit of electricity (1 kWh).
The
British Electricity Authority
The British Electricity Authority (BEA) was established as the central British electricity authority in 1948 under the nationalisation of Great Britain's electricity supply industry enacted by the Electricity Act 1947. The BEA was responsible for ...
was sceptical about the benefits of desulphurisation and challenged the committee’s recommendations. The Authority stated that this recommendation ‘strikes a damaging blow against the economy of electricity development in this country’ and that the financial implications ‘are potentially more serious than those of any previous restrictions or control imposed upon the Authority’s activities’.
The Authority claimed that installing
scrubber
Scrubber systems (e.g. chemical scrubbers, gas scrubbers) are a diverse group of air pollution control devices that can be used to remove some particulates and/or gases from industrial exhaust streams. An early application of a carbon dioxide scr ...
s in all power stations would entail an annual capital investment of £10 million and would increase the cost of electricity by 0.1 d. per kWh, therefore exceeding the cost-effectiveness criterion suggested in the draft Beaver report. The British Electricity Authority was also critical that the Beaver committee had made no serious attempt to assess the relative economics of different ways of reducing atmospheric pollution. It claimed that burning coal in modern power station boilers that were equipped with efficient grit collectors and into tall chimneys was ‘an extremely efficient method of controlling pollution in terms
€¦of capital outlay’.
Legislation
The Government initially resisted pressure to act, and was keen to downplay the scale of the problem due to economic pressures. It took moves by backbench MPs (including
Conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...
member
Gerald Nabarro
Sir Gerald David Nunes Nabarro (29 June 1913 – 18 November 1973) was a British businessman and Conservative Party politician who was an MP from 1950 until his death. Nabarro positioned himself on the right of the Conservative Party. Though h ...
, its sponsor) to pass a
Private Member's Bill
A private member's bill is a bill (proposed law) introduced into a legislature by a legislator who is not acting on behalf of the executive branch. The designation "private member's bill" is used in most Westminster system jurisdictions, in whi ...
on domestic coal burning to persuade the Government to support a change in the law. The Clean Air Act built on earlier efforts to regulate pollutants, particularly in London, where air quality had long been poor.
The Clean Air Act 1956 had multiple measures to reduce
air pollution
Air pollution is the contamination of air due to the presence of substances in the atmosphere that are harmful to the health of humans and other living beings, or cause damage to the climate or to materials. There are many different types ...
. It allowed the introduction of ‘smoke control areas’ in towns and cities in which only
smokeless fuels could be burned. By shifting domestic sources of heat towards cleaner coals, electricity, and gas, it reduced the amount of
smoke pollution and
sulphur dioxide
Sulfur dioxide (IUPAC-recommended spelling) or sulphur dioxide (traditional Commonwealth English) is the chemical compound with the formula . It is a toxic gas responsible for the odor of burnt matches. It is released naturally by volcanic activ ...
from household fires. Reinforcing these changes, the Act also included provisions to prevent the emission of dark smoke from chimneys, required new furnaces to be smokeless, allowed local planning authorities to require higher and more effective chimneys on buildings, and required that emitted grit and dust be minimised. By prohibiting what had been the hitherto widely accepted actions of private households, the Clean Air Act 1956 had important implications for the debate about public regulation, public health, and the sphere of legitimate Government intervention.
The 1952 smog gave a momentum for tougher action: as well as the Clean Air Act, its effects also led to the introduction of the City of London (Various Powers) Act of 1954, and later the Clean Air Act 1968.
Aftermath
Smog and its health effects continued to be a problem in London. During the London fog of 2–5 December 1957 smoke and sulphur dioxide concentrations reached levels comparable to 1952 and there were 760–1000 deaths.
Another episode in 1962 resulted in 750 deaths.
Further legislation
The provisions of the 1956 Act were extended by the Clean Air Act 1968, which made it an offence to emit dark smoke from a
chimney
A chimney is an architectural ventilation structure made of masonry, clay or metal that isolates hot toxic exhaust gases or smoke produced by a boiler, stove, furnace, incinerator, or fireplace from human living areas. Chimneys are typic ...
, empowered the Minister to define limits for emissions of grit and dust from furnaces, defined requirements for arrestment plant to be fitted to new furnaces, and provided a framework for control of the height and position of chimneys. The Act also allowed the Minister to create smoke control areas and introduce controls on use of unauthorised fuel in such areas.
The 1956 and 1968 Clean Air Acts were repealed by the Clean Air Act 1993,
which consolidated and extended the provisions of the earlier legislation.
See also
*
Clean Air Act (disambiguation)
*
Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation (FIDO)
Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation (FIDO) (which was sometimes referred to as "Fog Intense Dispersal Operation" or "Fog, Intense Dispersal Of") was a system used for dispersing fog and pea soup fog (dense smog) from an airfield so that a ...
– an invention to clear fog from airfields
References
External links
Smog in 1956 and the Clean Air Actat BBC On This Day
Clean Air Act and air legislationat NetRegs.gov.uk
UK legislation
Clean Air Act 1956: original text*
{{UK legislation
United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1956
Environmental law in the United Kingdom
Repealed United Kingdom Acts of Parliament
1956 in the environment
Air pollution in the United Kingdom