Progress with air quality management in the 60 years since the UK clean Air Act, 1956. Lessons, failures, challenges and opportunities

Abstract

This paper explores the challenges, opportunities and progress made with managing air quality since the United Kingdom parliament passed the Clean Air Act, 1956. It seeks to identify the factors contributing to successful management of air quality and the factors that have acted, or continue to do so, as barriers to progress. The public health catastrophe of the 1952 London Smog created the political momentum for the 1956 Act to be passed. The nature of the contemporary air pollution challenge is reviewed in terms of the public health burden, the economic cost and the governmental response. The contemporary response is considered inadequate for the scale and intensity of the problem.

Rescaling Air Quality Management: An Assessment of Local Air Quality Authorities in the United States

“…Although much of this work stemmed from the rapid rise of the industrial revolution in places like England, an emerging body of recent work highlights the structures and governance systems that can be illustrative for applying to the US context. 11,13 The European model, both at the EU level and select countries such as those of the United Kingdom, affirm local authority as superior when it comes to air quality control because of the ability of local agencies to draw on local knowledge and resources to appropriately target and address air quality challenges. 10,12 Future research comparing the United States and European local air quality standards, particularly with respect to the role of land use and transportation planning, political histories, and other factors that contribute to the unique characteristics of local air quality authorities (ie, regulation of wood stoves, vehicle retrofit, education, and outreach), would address questions currently unanswered by this study and would help provide additional research directions to advance air quality management.…”

“…Legislation through the Environment Act 1995 stipulated the development of an Air Quality Strategy, which made the national and local governments responsible for creating and implementing a framework for managing air quality, respectively. 11 While the Strategy identified national measures to address large-scale issues (ie, standards for vehicle fuel quality, engine technology, and combustion emissions), it placed much of the responsibility for improving air quality on local governments: an approach based on the principle that "sources are best managed at the lowest administrative level to ensure resources are efficiently and proportionately targeted taking account of local conditions" (p. 661). 12 Local governments thus have the responsibility of assessing both current and future air quality based on emissions from various sources (ie, transport, industrial, and other 2 Air, Soil and Water Research significant sources), and where predictions indicate potential exceedances of national standards, the local government is required to designate Air Quality Management Areas (AQMA) and prepare air quality management plans that compliment action taken at the national level.…”

The legacy of COVID-19: lessons and challenges for city-scale air quality management in the UK

“…Yet, during this period we have also witnessed NO 2 pollution reductions from traffic resulting from a radical and widespread change of citizen behaviour; a change that air quality management policies in the UK have failed to achieve since the initiation of the Environment Act, 1995 (Longhurst et al 2016). To date, clean air policies in the UK have been based on incremental approaches, which largely relied on soft law, voluntary actions and weak enforcement which, have been undermined by a lack of common purpose and shared priorities between levels of governments (Barnes et al 2018).…”

The impact of the 1952 London smog event and its relevance for current wood-smoke abatement strategies in Australia

“…Initially the Ministry of Housing did not believe that any further legislation needed to be added to the current 1936 Public Health Act (Brimblecombe 2006). But public concern persisted and the parliament established the Beaver Committee to investigate the nature, causes and effects of air pollution, assess current preventative measures, and make recommendations for government action (Longhurst et al 2016). In 1954 they recommended there be a Clean Air Act that moved beyond the current measures that focussed on industrial emissions, to include domestic smoke as well (Brimblecombe 2006).…”

“…The history of the 1952 London smog event and the impact of the 1956 (British) Clean Air Act has been widely documented and reviewed, particularly at the 50 th and 60 th year anniversaries (Brimblecombe 2006;Greater London Authority 2002;Heys 2012;Laskin 2006;Longhurst et al 2016). Bell and Davis reassessed the London smog event using new indicators for respiratory morbidity and mortality to demonstrate that original mortality estimates were under-estimated (Bell and Davis 2001).…”