A Brief of German air governance history

According to statistics, in 1961 the Ruhr District, it totally has 93 power plants and 82 steelmaking blast furnaces, every year it has released 1 million 500 thousand tons of soot and 4 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the air.

• In December 1962
  • the Ruhr Area has encounter haze crisis at december 1962.At that time, the concentration of sulfur dioxide in some areas up to 5000 micrograms per cubic meter.
• In the morning January 17th 1979
  • At the morning January 17th 1979, the Westdeutsche Broadcasting suddenly interrupted the program, the radio station has used German, Turkish, Spanish, Greek and Yugoslavia to make the emergency broadcast to advise in the western region of Ruhr that it has content exceed sulfur dioxide in the air ,and then the first alarm issue will come out regarding the haze.
• On January 18th, 1985
  • On January 18th, 1985, Germany appeared the most serious three alarms regarding the haze . The air was filled with the pungent smell of soot, low visibility, the implementation of a number of cities of the Ruhr area of the vehicle forbidding and stopped the heavy industries. The incident caused a lot of deaths.
• The end of 1990s
  • The end of 1990s, air quality has obvious improvement in Germany, the federal states have also repealed Decree haze,Federal states have also abolished the haze act.
• In 2007
  • In 2007, once plagued SO2 concentration suddently dropped to fand 8ug/min Germany.