Smoke laws first enacted in city of joy URBAN air pollution in India has become a cause of concern and alarm and the subject of much writing and debate on measures to control it. Calcutta is reputed to be one of the world's most polluted cities, but its citizens contend the pervasive acrid odours and hazy horizons are a recent problem and the city in the past was relatively smokeless. The pattern of fuel consumption in Calcutta suggests air pollution in the city can be divided into roughly three historical periods, according to researcher M R Anderson. In the period prior to 1855, domestic burning of wood, dung and illuminating vegetable oils was the major source of smoke, even though coal-burning became more in vogue after 1820. The second period, spanning the middle decades of the 19th century, witnessed a large increase in coal smoke augmenting a substratum of biomass emissions. After 1855, the use of coal increased dramatically and in the third period, after 1880, coal smoke from boilers and domestic use fundamentally altered Calcutta's ambient air quality. Smoke was cited, along with heat, dust, humidity and noisome smells, as one of the health hazards for Europeans in Calcutta in the 18th century. Calcutta was uniquely situated to suffer from air pollution. With the smoke problem arousing official concern and anxiety, Calcutta became in 1863 one of the first cities in the world to enact smoke nuisance legislation. A committee formed to investigate the problem in 1879 commissioned Frederick Grover, the Smoke Inspector for Leeds, in 1902 to make recommendations for smoke abatement. Grover's report gave rise to the Bengal Smoke Nuisances Act of 1905, and the subsequent establishment of the Bengal Smoke Nuisances Commission, which implemented a systematic but selective smoke abatement programme throughout the colonial period. The political urgency of Calcutta's smoke problem was linked closely with the city's role in the British empire. [snip] http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/node/3040 --- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar