1948 — Oct 26-31, Industrial Smog/Pollution, Donora (and Webster), PA –20-22

lornajarrettblanchard October 2, 1948

— 22 Hopey and Templeton. “In 1948, smog left deadly legacy in Donora.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

— 20 Brimblecombe, Peter (Ed.) Air Pollution Episodes. London: World Scientific, 2018, p. 48.

— 20 Daily Capital News, Jefferson City, MO. “Death Smog Could Occur Again…” 10-14-‘49

— 20 Greenberg, Michael I. Disasters: Terrorist, Natural and Man-Made, 2006, p. 5.[1]

— 20 Greenburg, et al. Public Health Reports, Vol. 77, No. 1, Jan 1962, pp. 7-16. 1962, p. 7.

— 20 History.com. This Day In History, Disaster.

— 20 National Weather Service. Today’s Weather Trivia.

–~20 PA Dept. of Environmental Protection. Historical Markers, “The 1948 Donora Smog.”

Narrative Information

Hopey and Templeton: “….the stew of sulfuric acid, nitrogen dioxide and fluoride pollution pumped into the air by U.S. Steel Corp.’s zinc and steel mills and trapped over the valley by a weather inversion, would last five days and create its own haunting ghosts. Through that Halloween week, Donora, 37 river miles south of Pittsburgh, was like hell with the lid on….And people were dying….The first floor of the Donora Hotel became the medical center, and the basement became the morgue, because funeral homes were full.

“On Sunday morning U.S. Steel finally shut down its Donora mills. By that afternoon, when a rainstorm blew into the valley ending the inversion and clearing the pollution, 22 people had died in Donora and the town of Webster, just across the Mon.[2] Almost half of Donora’s 13,000 residents were sickened, and hundreds were evacuated or hospitalized….

“In the months that followed, an additional 50 people died in Donora over the number that would normally be expected. And the town’s mortality rate remained significantly higher than that of neighboring towns in the Mon Valley for a decade.

“U.S. Steel refused to accept blame at the time and still has not turned over to researchers its archival data related to the fatal smog.

“Lawsuits totaling $4.5 million in claims were filed by more than 100 Donora residents against U. S. Steel. All were settled in 1951 for $256,000, according to a new book, “The Polluters,” written by Benjamin Ross and Steven Amter….

“Allegheny County adopted a smoke control ordinance in 1949, and the U.S. Air Pollution Control Act of 1955 was the first federal legislation to recognize pollution as a problem. The 1970 Clean Air Act established regulations limiting unhealthy smog, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and airborne particulates or soot.” (Hopey and Templeton. “In 1948, smog left deadly legacy in Donora.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 12-12-2010.)

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection: “Major federal clean air laws became a legacy of this environmental disaster that focused national attention on air pollution. In late October of 1948, a heavy fog blanketed this valley, and as the days passed, the fog became a thick, acrid smog that left about 20 people dead and thousands ill. Not until October 31 did the Donora Zinc Works shut down its furnaces–just hours before rain finally dispersed the smog. Location: 5th St. & Meldon Ave., Donora.” (PA Dept. of Environmental Protection. Historical Markers, “The 1948 Donora Smog.”)

Snyder: “An air pollution disaster over the two southwestern Pennsylvania towns of Donora and Webster in October 1948 took dozens of lives, left thousands literally gasping for breath, and motivated the United States Public Health Service (PHS) to enter the arena of air pollution policy.” (Snyder 1994, Abstract)

“A few days before Halloween of 1948, a heavy fog blanketed much of the Northeast and Midwest. Severe atmospheric conditions cloaked airports, slowed traffic to a crawl, dispatched people with respiratory ailments to the hospital for oxygen, and coated surfaces with a sticky film of muck. Pittsburgh survived the episode without resorting to daytime street lights, a credit to a newly-enforced municipal smoke control ordinance and to the city’s decreasing reliance on soft coal fuel. But southeast along the Monongahela River, conditions worsened critically for the steel towns of Donora and Webster. On Saturday October 31 seventeen people died in the space of twelve hours and thousands of people were left gasping for breath. A day later, Donora’s suffocating conditions lifted as quickly and mysteriously as they had descended.” (Snyder 1994, Introduction.)

Newspaper

Oct 13, 1949: “Washington, Oct. 13 – (AP) — The five-day smog which sickened almost 6,000 persons at Donora, Pa., a year ago was the result of an unusual combination of warm, stagnant air and heavily smoke-polluted fog, the Public Health service said today. The agency’s report said 43 per cent of the population of Donora and nearby Webster was made ill, confirming the wide-spread effect of the poisoned air as disclosed in surveys last winter. Deaths totaled 20.

“The 200-page report, was released by Surgeon General Leonard A. Scheele. He said Donora probably had another serious smog period in April 1945 – ‘the vital statistics show there were almost twice as many deaths in the town as in any ordinary April or any ordinary month.’

“And he warned that the circumstances could occur again there or in other highly-industrialized

areas. To prevent such a recurrence, Scheele recommended that:

Fog-afflicted industrial centers keep a close watch on weather conditions.

Industrial plants be curtailed or closed when smog conditions appear to be developing, in order to reduce sharply the contamination of air.

“Federal Security Administrator Oscar R, Ewing, at a news conference with Scheele, called for immediate attention to the long-range national problem of air pollution. He said federal, state and local agencies must co-operate with industries on pollution control in each industrial city and town. ‘What we have now is the certain knowledge that this problem of air pollution is of major importance,” Ewing said. “We can now say positively what couldn’t be said before with scientific proof — that contamination of air in industrial areas can cause serious acute disabling diseases.” “This report reveals for the first time that in addition to 20 deaths, the illness of 5,910 persons – 43 per cent of the population – was caused by the smog over Donora and the nearby community of Webster beginning Oct. 27, 1948,” Ewing said.

“Most of Donora’s wage-earners work in a big steel and wire plant and a zinc plant in the town. The health, service estimated that the zinc plant, steel plant, wire mill and steam generating equipment discharge into Donora’s atmosphere daily more than 112,000 pounds of particle matter – including sulphur compounds, zinc, lead, iron, and cadmium – as well as gases, including 760,800 pounds of carbon monoxide.” (Daily Capital News, Jefferson City, MO. “Death Smog Could Occur Again, U.S. Report Says.” 10-14-1949, 2.)

Sources

Brimblecombe, Peter (Ed.) Air Pollution Episodes (Air Pollution Reviews, Vol. 6). London: World Scientific, 2018. Google digital preview accessed 10-29-2017 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=jpA4DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Daily Capital News, Jefferson City, MO. “Death Smog Could Occur Again, U.S. Report Says.” 10-14-1949, 2. At: http://www.newspaperarchive.com/FullPagePdfViewer.aspx?img=90770071

Greenberg, Michael I. Disasters: Terrorist, Natural and Man-Made. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2006.

Greenburg, Leonard, Morris B. Jacobs, Bernadette M. Drolette, Franklyn Field, and M.M. Braverman. “Report of an Air Pollution Incident in New York City, November 1953.” Public Health Reports, Vol. 77, No. 1, January 1962, pp. 7-16. Accessed at: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?artid=1914642&pageindex=1

History.com. This Day in History, Disaster, October 29, 1948. “Killer Smog Claims Elderly Victims.” At: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Landing&displayDate=10/29&categoryId=disaster

Hopey, Don and David Templeton. “In 1948, smog left deadly legacy in Donora.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 12-12-2010. Accessed 10-29-2017 at: http://www.post-gazette.com/news/health/2010/12/12/In-1948-smog-left-deadly-legacy-in-Donora/stories/201012120248

National Weather Service Forecast Office, Dodge City, KS. Today’s Weather Trivia (Oct). NWS, NOAA, Nov 1, 2005 mod. At: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ddc/wxtrivia/wxtrvOct.php

[1] Cites: Schrenk, H. H., H. Heimann, et al. “Air Pollution in Donora, PA: Epidemiology of the Unusual Smog Episode of October, 1948, Preliminary Report.” Public Health Bulletin No. 306. Washington, DC: U.S. Public Health Service, 1949; Gammage, J. “In 1948 a killer fog spurred air cleanup.” Philadelphia Inquirer, 10-28-1998.

[2] Monongahela River.