Smoke Wars: Anaconda Copper, Montana Air Pollution, and the Courts, 1890-1924

Smoke Wars traces the campaign against air pollution in southwestern Montana from the fight to abolish open-heap roasting—a process that created dense clouds of low-lying, noxious smoke and caused death rates in Butte to exceed those of New York City—to the battle against toxic emissions released from the great stacks of the Anaconda Reduction Works. This landmark environmental study raises issues of corporate responsibility, the rights of citizens, and the costs of industrialization, issues still hotly contested today.