Fun Fact, the plant near where I used to live, The Conesville Generating Station, was one of the worst polluters for acid rain. That all vanished one day when they put scrubbers on the stacks.
I grew up about 5 states away, downwind of all that air coming out of Ohio. We had smog days in the hot, humid days of summer- a warning to those with breathing issues. The air usually smelled stale to varying degrees when we were getting winds from the southwest. When the air switched to coming from the northwest out of Canada, it was noticeably fresh and clean smelling (as long as there were no raging Canadian wildfires).
My sniffer isn't what it used to be but the air doesn't seen as stale anymore, the scrubbers did a great job. They put scrubbers on the paper mills here too. We used to get a strong rotten egg smell from the tall stack on the paper plant 15 miles away when the wind blew in our direction - it was so obnoxious! Scrubbers ended that phenomena by 1975-1980.
I remember that smell, that sick sweet smell from a papermill. All of that's gone back home now. The mills, the power plant. Oh well.
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