Soot Buried Southeast Michigan

The state's air was menaced by uncontrolled emissions from furnaces, boilers, chimneys, and even passing ships on the Detroit River by the late 19th Century. Detroit enacted its first "smoke abatement" ordinance in 1885, but tough controls on what became known as air pollution followed World War II.

In 1936 the chief smoke inspector for Detroit estimated that 350 tons of "soot, fly-ash and dirt" fell each year on every square mile of Detroit, up from 56 tons in 1931. "Smoking factory chimneys, long pointed to as symbols of civic prosperity, actually are signs that money is being wasted and health menaced," said Charles J. McCabe. He warned of dangers caused by the release of sulfur dioxide from coal burning, saying it weathered paint, harmed green vegetation, and caused inflammation of the nose and throat. The city's reduction in smoke inspectors from 12 to two had crippled the program, he complained.

A Detroit Free Press campaign to clean up the twin civic plagues of rats and thick smoke helped propel the city's revised 1947 air quality ordinance, considered the first modern law of its kind in the state. The death of 20 people during an air pollution episode in Donora, Pennsylvania in 1948 made air pollution a national concern. Wayne County adopted an air pollution regulation in 1955; Michigan's first air pollution law took effect in 1965.