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Smoke pouring into the air from a Pittsburgh steel mill, 1906.
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Smoke pollution produced by Pittsburgh factories

Credit: Image Donated by Corbis - Bettmann

"Hell with the lid off," was an apt description of Pittsburgh during its peak decades of industrial production. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Pittsburgh ran on bituminous coal. Each month the steam boilers and furnaces of its industries, railroads, and homes dumped 100 tons of pollutants on its streets.

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