I'm trying to come up with different ways of tracing pollution. It's possible that the technology of today is good enough to do that. However, I'm wondering whether there aren't other ways.
My specific question:
Are there such things as tracer chemicals? My idea is as follows: Say a factory spews junk into the air. The junk then flies over a distance and it settles in on a city. From our omniscient perspective this is easy to show as a punishable offense. However, how would environmental forensics determine who the violator is? I'm thinking that there could be social pressure to include some sort of tracer chemicals in the factory's smoke so that it can be traced. The chemicals would have to be inert, invisible, as light as the pollution, and somehow (semi-)uniquely identifiable.
Anyone on here know about such chemicals?
If instead you know of other modern technology to trace pollution, I could use that as well.