High chimney policy

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Under a policy of high chimneys or high chimney policy refers to the principle, using high industrial chimneys , the emissions on a large area as possible to spread and thus the air pollution to reduce in the near vicinity. The overall emissions are not reduced.

The term originally refers to a development in West Germany in the 1960s. However, the Prussian “General Industrial Code” of January 17, 1845 stipulated the construction of sufficiently high chimneys in order to avoid or dilute the nuisance caused by high emissions. In 1895 Prussia issued the first “Technical Instructions on Air” to reduce emissions.

In the 1950s, air pollution in the Ruhr area had increased sharply. After the first initiatives to keep the air clean , the then Chancellor candidate Willy Brandt announced the political goal before the 1961 federal election : “ The sky over the Ruhr must be blue again! “In 1962 the first state pollution control law came into force in North Rhine-Westphalia , other federal states followed suit with their own state pollution control laws. In addition, the TA Luft came into force in 1964 . The operators of the systems with high pollutant emissions usually reacted to the stricter regulations by increasing their chimneys. This trend became known as the "tall chimney policy". Soot and pollutants were now transported over a wide area (long-distance transport). However, this only relieved the burden regionally. At a great distance from the sources of pollution, new environmental damage occurred ( acid rain , forest dieback ).

See also

literature

  • Gerd Spelsberg: Plague of smoke. On the history of air pollution , Aachen 1986.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cornelia Staats: The emergence of the Federal Immission Control Act of March 15, 1974. Peter Lang, 2009, p. 12 ff.
  2. ↑ Thorsten Schulz-Walden: Beginnings of global environmental policy: Environmental security in international politics (1969-1975) , Section I.1: The 1950s and 1960s: "Blue sky over the Ruhr" and the practice of tall chimneys. Walter de Gruyter, Munich 2013, pp. 23–29.