"Atmospheric pollution is caused by industrial chemical emissions, chiefly from factories and electrical generating plants which burn fossil fuels and vent sulphur and nitrogen oxides into the air, which turn rain into dilute solutions of sulphuric and nitric acid. This acidified rain corrodes buildings, and does incalculable damage to lakes and forests. In the 1960s Swedish scientists identified acid rain as the cause of drastic reductions in fish populations in freshwater lakes, and Sweden introduced legislation to reduce industrial emissions". --Stuart Holroyd (in The Arkana Dictionary of New Perspectives, 1989).