Short answers, pulled from the story.
Environmental Protection UK traces its origins to 1898, when it was founded as the Coal Smoke Abatement Society (CSAS). It later became the National Society for Clean Air, and then changed its name to Environmental Protection UK in 2007.
The Coal Smoke Abatement Society was founded by Sir William Blake Richmond, a London-based artist, in 1898. Richmond was motivated by frustration at low light levels in winter caused by coal smoke, and wrote a letter to the Times comparing the darkness to a total eclipse of the sun.
The organisation was instrumental in the introduction of the Clean Air Act 1956. The Act began as a private member's bill promoted by Sir Gerald Nabarro, following the Great London Smog of 1952, which killed between 4,000 and 12,000 people due to air pollution.
In 1998, the Government's Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollution (COMEAP) estimated that approximately 24,000 deaths per year in the UK are advanced by normal concentrations of air pollution. In hotter years, such as 2003, the figure may have been even larger.
In 2023, Environmental Protection UK merged into the Institution of Environmental Sciences. This merger led to the creation of the Environmental Policy Implementation Community.
Noise Action Week is an annual event held in the third week of May, first co-ordinated by NSCA (the predecessor of Environmental Protection UK) as Noise Awareness Day in 1997. It grew from engaging around 50 local authorities to attracting at least 200 local authority participants and funding from all UK government administrations.