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German History in Documents and Images
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Environmental Destruction and Air Pollution in the Ruhr Valley (1985)
Water and air pollution in West Germany was only gradually reduced through prohibitions on waste discharge and the legally-mandated installation of modern filtering equipment. This photograph shows a coal-fired power plant, without desulfurization equipment, near Hamm an der Lippe in the Ruhr Valley. The consequences for the natural environment are obvious: dying forests. Photo by Günter Zint.