Clean Air Act

The Clean Air Act of 1970 (amended in 1977 and 1990) establishes federal responsibility for monitoring and controlling air pollution. The law was passed at a time of growing environmental awareness in the United States. On April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day took place as a grassroots movement to call the public's attention to all forms of environmental degradation, and throughout the 1970s numerous laws were passed to protect the nation's environment: The Clean Air Act was passed later in 1970, to be followed by the Clean Water Act, the Water Quality Improvement Act, the Resource Recovery Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.

The Clean Air Act of 1970 was not the nation's first effort at air pollution control. The Air Pollution Control Act of 1955, for example, provided funding for federal research into air pollution, and the Clean Air Act of 1963 created a federal program, part of the U.S. Public Health Service, to research ways to monitor and control air pollution, such as the toxic cloud that engulfed the industrial town of Donora, Pennsylvania, in 1948, killing twenty people and making six thousand more sick. A third piece of legislation, the Air Quality Act of 1967, expanded the role of the federal government in combating interstate air pollution; as a result of the act, the federal government began to extensively study ambient air pollution and inspect its sources. The Clean Air Act of 1970—essentially a set of major amendments to the 1963 Clean Air Act—further expanded the federal government's role. At about the same time, the National Environmental Policy Act created the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA was charged with implementing the requirements of the Clean Air Act.

According to the EPA, the Clean Air Act has been a rousing success. Since 1970 six of the most common air pollutants have been reduced by more than half, and air toxins from industrial sources—chemical plants, refineries, paper mills—have been cut nearly 70 percent. Further, newly manufactured cars are 90 percent cleaner—all this at a time when the nation's gross domestic product has tripled, energy consumption has increased by 50 percent, and vehicle use has doubled.