ABSTRACT
Less industrialized and coal oriented, France has not been afflicted by air pollution as rapidly and as intensively as Great Britain. Nevertheless, at the turn of the twentieth century, certain municipal administrations enquired about the possibility of reducing emissions. Persuading the industrialists seemed the only feasible option, while smokeless technical devices were not always efficient. In 1932 a first national law was specifically devoted to air pollution, with considerable restrictions (only ‘industrial’ emissions were targeted). Scientists and high-ranking civil servants reacted in the 1950s, in the wake of the Great Smog in London. The problem of air pollution was redefined in the early 1960s, with a shift from industrial pollution toward domestic and individual sources (heating, automobiles). The public health concern was relegated to the background, behind the priority given to the establishment of monitoring networks. Stakeholders, involved at various levels, from the local to the international, argued about air pollution, an issue that was less easy to tackle than water pollution in the France of the 1960s and 1970s.
