The deadly Donora smog of 1948 revolutionized environmental protection, but have we forgotten the lesson?

Five days before Halloween in 1948, a yellow fog enveloped Donora, Pennsylvania, and the nearby village of Webster in an almost impenetrable haze. Citizens participating in the Donora Halloween *** squinted at the ghostly figures barely visible in the smoke on the streets. The Donora Dragons played their usual football game on Friday night, however, their view was obscured by fog and they ran the ball instead of throwing it. As panicked residents began calling doctors and hospitals to report breathing difficulties, Dr. William Jungers carried a lantern and led ambulances on foot through the impassable streets.

The first death occurred at around 2 a.m. on Saturday, October 30. Within days, 19 more people died in Donora and Webster. There was no coffin in the funeral home and no flowers in the florist's shop. Hundreds of people flooded into hospitals, gasping for air, while hundreds more with respiratory or heart disease were advised to evacuate the city. The fog finally lifted until it rained midday Sunday. Jungers believed that if the fog had not lifted at that time, "the casualty list would have been 1,000 people instead of 20."

The Donora Smog of 1948 was the worst air pollution episode in U.S. history disaster. It jump-started the environmental and public health fields, drew attention to industrial regulation, and launched a national conversation about the effects of pollution. But in doing so, industry works against human health and the environment. This war has raged throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, with short-term economic gains often outweighing long-term consequences. Donora taught Americans a powerful lesson about the unpredictability of industrial process prices. The question now is whether

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still existed before Carnegie Steel left for Donora. Donora sits on the Monongahela River about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh, in a narrow valley flanked by cliffs as high as 400 feet. Webster, meanwhile, was located nearby, across from Monongella. By 1902, the Carnegie Steel Company had installed a facility in the neighborhood with a dozen furnaces; by 1908, Donora had the largest rail freight volume in the area; by 1915, the zinc plant was in production; by In 1918, the U.S. Steel and Wire Company paid its first fine for health-damaging air pollution. Historian Lynn Page Snyder writes:

Beginning in the early 1920s, Weber Landowners, tenants and farmers in Sturt sued, seeking compensation for damage to crops, orchards, livestock and topsoil caused by the smelter's effluent, as well as the destruction of fences and homes. "During the height of the Great Depression, dozens of Webster families banded together to file suit against the zinc plant, claiming air pollution was harming their health." But U.S. Steel dismissed their claims with lengthy legal proceedings, and in 1948 In September, plans to upgrade the zinc plant's furnace to reduce soot emissions were put on hold because it was not economically feasible.

In the mill town of Donora, a smoky, deadly fog killed 19 people. (Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Although residents worry about the smoke coming from the factories and valleys, many can't afford to worry; Because the vast majority of these 14,000 residents are employed in the same factory. So when a deadly smoke incident occurred, plant owners and employees scrambled to find another culprit (although the zinc plant was shut down for a week as a concession).

"The first investigators were driven out of town by men armed with handguns," said Devra Davis, founder of the Environmental Health Trust and author of "When Smoke Flows Like Water." "Most of the members of the town council work at the mill and some of them have administrative jobs such as supervisors. Any suggestion that there may be issues with the mill itself, supporting them financially is just a matter of having no financial incentive at all to entertain

No matter where they fall, everyone from town leaders to factory owners agrees they need answers and ways to prevent this disaster from happening again. The Donora City Council, the United Steelworkers, United States Steel and Wire Co., and even the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have called on the federal government to launch an investigation led by the nascent U.S. Public Health Service. /p>

"For decades, pollution has been caused by very powerful industries," says Leif Frey, a historian at the University of Virginia and a member of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. "The state government's investigation is very industry-friendly," said Leif Fredrickson, the state's chief executive. “So (the people of Donora) are rightly concerned about this and want the federal government to be involved.

But it turns out public health services are very concerned about their relationship with state researchers, and this is before the federal government has much say in state and local pollution controls. Resident surveys, crop and livestock inspections, and measurements vary. sources of air pollution, monitoring wind speed and meteorological conditions. They found that more than 5,000 of 14,000 locals had symptoms ranging from moderate to severe. The U.S. Steel Wire Mill and the Donora Zinc Plant emitted a mixture of toxic gases, heavy metals and fine particulate matter. They looked like those from a gas war. Survivors," Davis said.

A preliminary report was released in October 1949 and the results were inconclusive. The researchers did not single out the plants and the wastewater they produced, but instead noted A range of factors: pollution from factories and, yes, a temperature inversion that traps smog in valleys for days (a weather phenomenon in which a layer of cold air is trapped by a layer of hot air above in a bubble), plus pollution such as boat traffic on the river and heaters used in homes

Some locals noted that other towns experienced the same weather event without high casualties. "There is something in the zinc plant that is causing these deaths," resident Louis Bainbridge wrote to Pennsylvania Governor James Duff. "I don't want to put men out of work, but your life is more valuable than your job." ” A local nurse administers oxygen to a patient at an emergency hospital in Donora, which is being hit by deadly smoke. (Bettmann/Contributor)

Others expressed concern about the findings and Outraged by the plant’s lack of responsibility, it filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Steel company, Snyder wrote: “In response, U.S. Steel & Wire stuck to its original explanation: The smoke was an act of God. Ultimately, U.S. Steel & Wire settled without accepting liability for the accident. ". Although no further studies were conducted in the years following the event, a 1961 study found that cancer and cardiovascular disease mortality rates increased significantly in Donora from 1948 to 1957. Day Weiss believes thousands more people died in the months and years following the event than were officially recognized as fog events, thanks to our bodies' response to the fine particles that are so deadly. These tiny particles slip into the bloodstream, causing the thickening of the blood, which in turn increases the chance of a heart attack or stroke, Davis said. There were some positive reasons for the incident: it also sparked interest in a new kind of public health research.

"Before Donora, it was not generally recognized that long-term chronic exposure could affect