There certainly was air pollution but I don't think it was ever anything like a modern smog or the infamous London fog. In fact there is a noticeable record of pollutants in Greenland's icecaps that line up with the heights of the Roman empire. These pollutants diminish after Rome's decline.

As to actual reactions to air pollution, we don't have anyone complaining about smog or anything like it, but wealthy Romans did not like being in the city if they could avoid it. People threw their night waste into the street and the summer weather encouraged mosquitoes. The city most likely reeked of human and animal waste along with being crowded with day-laborers and seasonal workers loitering around outside. People who could afford it had houses in rural Italy, especially in the hills where they could catch a breeze and get away from the mosquitoes.

In response to one of the other questions, people probably used wood charcoal as their main source of fuel. It burns better and has much better heating values than raw wood. Other popular sources of fuel were the leftovers from olive pressing (they can be shaped into cakes and dried out) and animal waste. Urban people probably tried to use the material that produced the least amount of smoke, and that would be the olive leftovers and charcoal (at least compared to wood).

EDIT: I want to be clear that I am only discussing ancient Rome.

Wood (including charcoal) is a cleaner fuel than fossils and was generally preferred where available. But where it wasn't available in sufficient quantities - larger settlements in chillier climates - people did burn fossil fuels long before the Industrial Revolution. The resulting pollution could get bad enough that Edward I of England had to pass a law in 1272 banning the sale or use of "sea coal", with stringent penalties - torture or even death - for violation.

There were other reasons for poor air quality in cities, of course - sewage and tanneries, for example - but don't rule out fossil fuels.

Source: David Urbatino, London's Historic "Pea-Soupers", EPA Journal, Summer 1994

EDIT: I've just been digging up a few more references to the Edward I law, and several of them mention that pressure for it came from nobles and clergy. Which might just mean "people who could still afford to buy firewood and so could afford to get sniffy about air quality", but might also mean "landowners who profited from the sale of firewood and so had a vested interest in shutting out competing fuels", i.e. their motivations could have been economic rather than environmental. Any views on how plausible a scenario this is?

I like to ad an question.

Do we have any actuall records of smokeproblems? as in, did they care about registring airproblems or hinting it with comments about the fresh air when people did leave the cities?

Also were they burning firewood constantly? Where did they get enough for everyone?

While not at all the scope of a large city, smoke from cooking fires still poses a significant health threat to many people around the world, particularly women who are inside the home with the burning fire all day. This site elaborates on some of the issues of cookstove pollution in modern Tanzania and what can be done to mitigate the health problems. Perhaps this is are a good place to start if you want to learn more about how ancient pollution affected people.

"Air pollution problems of ancient times are mentioned even in poems of classical poets. Horatius (65 B.C. – 8 A.D.) wrote that Roman buildings became more and more dark from smoke and this phenomenon might have been observed in many ancient cities, as well. Seneca (4 B.C. – 65 A.D.), teacher of Emperor Nero (A.D. 37-68.), was in poor health all in his life and his physician frequently advised him to live Rome. In one of his letter, in 61 A.D, he wrote to Lucilius that he needed to live gloomy smoke and kitchen smells of Rome in order to feel himself better (Heidorn, 1978). Roman law states that cheese making manufactures should be settled so that their smoke not to pollute other houses (Mészáros, 2002). The Roman Senate introduced a law about 2,000 years ago, according to which: „Aerem corrumpere non licet”, namely „Polluting air is not allowed."

Tons of sources at the end of this paper: http://www2.sci.u-szeged.hu/eghajlattan/akta03/005-015.pdf

There are accounts of the condition of life in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen during the peak of its porcelain trade (this is the origin of a majority of the Chinese porcelain exported to Europe during the time when the process was still a secret). Basically it wasn't very nice at the time, with some 3,000 furnaces going.

In 1712 Jesuit priest Père d'Entrecolles wrote "The whirling flames and smoke that rise in different places make the approach to Jingdezhen remarkable for its extent, depth and shape. During a night entrance, one thinks that the whole city is on fire, or that it is one large furnace with many vent holes. Perhaps these encircling mountains form a proper situation for the production of porcelain."

No. Energy consumption was drastically lower. Here is a graph of energy consumption over the last 2 hundred years. [Energy usage] (http://ourfiniteworld.com/2012/03/12/world-energy-consumption-since-1820-in-charts/). This doesn't mean a neighbor's smoke might not blow in your face (convective pollution) just that pollutants wouldn't build up faster than they could be quickly dispersed.