They were measures that all ecologically minded citizens could applaud. By the 1950s, more and more communities in the industrial U.S. Northeast were switching from burning dusty, high-sulfur coal in their furnaces to extremely clean natural gas. Along with the fuel changeover, factories raised the height of smokestacks to help disperse smoke over a wider area and added sophisticated devices called particle precipitators to collect soot before it escaped. Yet for all of the good intentions, those anti-pollution efforts may have created a new headache: a marked rise in the acidity of rainfall,...
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