That's not true. I have a 1.0 megabase (2k spm/min) and can control the pollution by placing one air filtering machine per chunk in the heavy production areas (I use omega drills which spit out up to 2k pollution/sec), and by building a wall with air filters around my main base no pollution escapes.
All you need then is bots which collect the used filters and bring them to one of the several collection stations (railway stations with coal request and filter recyclers) and it's done.