A ir pollution has a long history Londoners have complained of the Smoke from sea coal from the thirteenth century onwards1 but the development of a steam-powered, coal-burning technology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries created pollution problems of a new order of magnitude. Coal output rose from roughly ii million tons in i8oo to almost 50 million tons in i850 and its combustion in furnaces, steam engines, and domestic hearths created smoke palls which came to be regarded as the inevitable accompaniment to industrial activity. Wordsworth described the industrial town: "O'er which the smoke of unremitting fires/Hangs permanent ")2 The new chemical industries worsened the situation by adding new, noisome, and often toxic elements to the atmosphere; because of their impact, the eminent scientist Lyon Playfair argued that airborne emissions from alkali manufacture were "the monster nuisance of all".3 Industrial-pollution is perhaps the least studied consequence of the Industrial Revolution. Almost fifty years ago Lewis Mumford pointed out that the first mark of "paleotechnic industry" was pollution of the air and the second, pollution of waterways,4 but apart from noting the aesthetic and health implications of dirt and smoke, historians have not followed up his pioneering work. This neglect is unwarranted because many Victorians were affected by pollution, some seriously so. A few were in a position to protect themselves and in doing so they imposed significant restraints upon the freedom of manufacturers and also expanded the sphere of government involvement in the economy. This article looks at one such episode where the interests of alkali manufacturers came into conflict with those of neighbouring landowners. It traces attempts by landowners and others to win some redress for their grievances which began at the end of the i820s and culminated in i863 with the passage of the Alkali Act. This remarkable measure placed the property of manufacturers under the supervision of the state in order to protect the property of landowners, and most conspicuously the property of large, wealthy land-