Clean air.

An atmospheric sometimes poetic film concerning the campaign to improve air quality in the United Kingdom as a consequence of the Clean Air Act put into placeafter the Great Smog of 1952. Sequences illustrate the task at hand; a young girl plays outside her small terraced house in a Northen town; her mother hangs up a piece of washing which quickly becomes besmirched by air-borne smog particles. A group of children (of which the young girl is one) look across a smoggy vista. There is footage of dirty domestic chimneys and diesel trains. Meanwhile in laboratory conditions, the effects of smog and air pollution have been analysed especially from domestic appliances like open coal fires. In Smoke Control Areas, families had to reduce their fossil fuel usage and so new kinds of grates and fuels were installed (cokeless coal); homes could then be cleaner (this is amply illustrated by families happily going about their business in rather an idealised way). Ultimately gas, electric cookers and radiators gleamingly white and shown in situ mean the end to fossil fuel use in the home.