One of the achievments that is listed most prominently on Mary Harney's website was a ban on the sale of bitumonous coal in Dublin (and eventually other cities) that is credited with the ending of Winter Smog. The first link below cites work that suggested that this had a big effect on mortality. The second link is a very interesting paper by Greenstone showing the effect of clean air laws in the US on infant mortality. It would certainly be worth revisiting the smog question in Ireland to examine further the effect it had on mortality; the differential effect at different stages of the life-cycle; the socio-economic distribution of the effect; whether the effect is still continuing in terms of whether children in the womb post-ban had a better ante-natal environment etc.,
http://www.euro.who.int/eehc/implementation/20060322_1
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=509182
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Janet Currie also has a comprehensive paper showing the effect of air pollution reduction on infant mortality in California
http://patagonia.econ.columbia.edu/~currie/Papers/Air_Pollution_and_Infant.pdf
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