REGIONAL CLEAN AIR INSTITUTE 209

metropolitan centers throughout the world have over the years re-
ceived passing notoriety when air inversions reach the magnitude of

killer smogs. However, only in the past year when massive air inver-

sions affected countless metropolitan areas across the United States
did the nationwide public's interest become sufficiently awakened and
the public media sufficiently aroused to the growing proportion of
this menace. Suddenly, we, who have been both aware and engaged
in actively combatting this problem of air pollution, have found our
ranks strengthened by public opinion urging us forward to greater
exertions. Increased publicity, which statistically documented the
damage to vegetation and property as well as the critical hazards to
health, has enabled the State and local governments to regulate and
legislate and finance more and better pollution abatement programs
than ever before. Fortified by public opinion we are at last able to
enforce governmental policy which will first eliminate the causes of
air pollution and second prevent further development or escalation
by potential sources of pollution.

Substantial credit must be given to the Congress of the United
States which correctly anticipated the magnitude of this incipient
menace in the enactment of the Clean Air Act of 1963. This legisla-
lation has provided increasing technical and financial aid to stimulate
and assist the state and local governments in the development of con-
structive air pollution control and abatement programs. Federal stan-
ards and guidelines authorized by the Clean Air Act have given the
states direction, and Federally financed research, to date, has drama-
tized, documented and consequently justified state efforts to legislate,
regulate and enforce air quality standards.

Maryland, in general, and Baltimore in particular, because of their
favorable geography and topography have never had to cope with air
pollution problems of the proportion found in Los Angeles, or Pitts-
burgh, or St. Louis. Variable winds have always rescued our metro-
politan areas from potentially dangerous smogs. And while our State
and local governments were cognizant of an increasing concentration
of pollutants in the air, public lethargy and lack of adequate docu-
mentation of the problem caused State legislation to be limited in
financing and regulatory powers. An Air Pollution Control Board
existed but it lacked effective power to enforce health laws or anti-
pollution regulations. The Control Board was but a beginning of
awareness and concern, a recognition of the problem. I do not mean
to dismiss this Board as ineffective. Under its auspices initial contact,
communication and cooperation on pollution control programs by the