Clean Air Act 1963

Clean Air Act of 1963

The Industrial Revolution wielded an unprecedented influence in the improvement of the economy of the United States (IRWeb , n . d . Along with the technological advances and the economic wealth , however , came the horrors of pollution which resulted to serious environmental degradation in many parts of the United States (Rosen , 2003 . The issue of air pollution , though , did not just emerge as an aftermath of the Industrial Revolution and is definitely not isolated to the United States . Fleming and Knorr (1999 ) traced a 1306 proclamation by the then

br King Edward I of England which outlawed the use of sea coal in London because of the ill-effects of the smoke emanating from it . Here in the United States , however , efforts towards the control of air pollution became evident only during the Industrial Revolution

In the year 1881 , Chicago and Cincinnati became the first two cities to promulgate laws intended to promote clean air . Other cities , towns and regions followed suit and began to enact clean air legislations . The Bureau of Mines , which operated under the Department of the Interior established the Office of Air Pollution at the begininning of the 20th century to control smoke emissions . The office was , however short-lived because of its inactivity . Reported incidents of smog in the Los Angeles and Donora , Pennsylvania areas during the 1940s drew public attention once again on the issue of air pollution . The US government dealt with the issue on a national level in the year 1955 with the passage of the HYPERLINK "http /www .ametsoc .org /sloan /cleanair /cleanairlegisl .html " \l "caa55 Air Pollution Control Act of 1955 . The law was considered as the first in a HYPERLINK "http /www .ametsoc .org /sloan /cleanair /cleanairlegisl .html " series of clean air and air quality control acts which are still in effect and continue to be revised and amended (Fleming and Knorr , 1999 . The Act also funded research for the scope and sources of air pollution (US Environmental Protection Agency , 2006

The Clean Air Act , originally passed in 1963 , is the main force behind the control of air pollution in the United States . However , important amendments were added to the legislation in both 1970 and 1990 in an effort by the US federal government to enforce a comprehensive scheme for mitigating air pollution . In a nutshell , the Clean Air Act as enacted by the US Congress in 1963 was a moderate bill (ThinkQuest 1999 ) with the following main features (1 ) it authorized the development of a national agenda to deal with environmental problems associated with air pollution (2 ) it mandated the conduct of research on practices which will minimize air pollution and (3 ) it batted for the establishment of state control agencies pollution (US Environmental Protection Agency , 2006

It was in 1965 when the federal government launched its first active role in the clean air policy when an amendment was instituted in the Clean Air Act of 1963 empowering the United States Department of Health to design and implement...