Air Pollution Control and Public Apathy

The importance of public involvement in programs of air pollution control has been stressed by a number of writers in the field, most recently by Sterner in his comments to the Third National Conference on Air Pollution.¹ As he points out, public apathy appears to be a critical barrier in the development and implementation of effective control programs. Along the same line, Dixon and Lodge, in a digest of the report of the AAAS Air Conservation Committee, state that, “The best program in the world can fail in the face of opposition or apathy on the part of the public.”² It is the purpose of this paper to take a more analytical look at this problem, particularly in the light of recent data from an opinion survey in West Virginia. If such apathy exists, effective countermeasures require that we examine it more fully and understand its sources. Collective handwringing will do little to meet the problem.