If you had "Followed the letter but not the spirit of a rule" and wound up endangering people's health, do you honestly think there would be no repercussions other than a "haha, clever you! You can get away with it on a technicality this once" ?
Being good stewards of the Eart is important, and as long as there are regulations and rules, there will be different attitudes to contend with. I consider air quality to be valuable, I genuinely do. I also think the entire annual production of all VW automobiles globally does less air quality "damage" than one season of wildfires in the western United States. Or a vocanic eruption.
"empirically show" is a stupefyingly high standard for a comments thread.
I assume that you are familiar with the scale of the problem for starter?
e.g. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollut... http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/study-air-pol... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26973783
It's a misdirection on your part anyway, comparing a knowingly harmful and deceptive like this to Some industrial accident is not valid: People die in accidents; this does stop murder being a thing.