Photos: L.A.’s mid-century smog was so bad, people thought it was a gas attack
Pollution earned the city the nickname ‘Smell-A’
“Only twenty of ten on Monday morning and already the sky was a flat canvas of smog haze pulled taut to its combustible edges as far as the eye could see.”
Helena Maria Viramontes, Their Dogs Came with Them
Urban air pollution is often seen as an unfortunate but inevitable byproduct of industrialization. Everyone wants the economic engine that produces smog — but no one wants to live with the consequences. The result, largely, is a correlation between pollution and income levels. Even today, more than fifty years since Angelenos began demanding better protection from bad air, the heaviest levels of pollution are in low income communities.
But L.A. has come a long way. In 1943, the first big smog scare sent residents running from what they assumed was a Japanese gas attack. The city’s once clear coastal air had become a tear-inducing haze, and no one knew what was causing it. At the time, it seemed like it might be an anomaly of geography. But it’s no coincidence that the presence of air pollution became a problem in the 1940s, when the number of cars in L.A. had doubled from one to two million. Scientists were only beginning to understand the impact of industry and development on the environment, and the smog was initially misattributed to chemical plants and backyard trash fires. Then, in 1948, a Caltech biochemist named Arie Haagen-Smit made the connection with car exhaust. Even after his discovery, Haagen-Smit had to fight the oil-industry backed researchers who attempted to disprove his ideas.
Change followed, albeit slowly. Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1963. A little over a decade later, national laws requiring catalytic converters for new automobiles were introduced. The new laws helped roll back the L.A. haze, but the legislation came too late for the millions of people who had grown up under oppressive smog. By 1987, an estimated 27 percent of Angelenos were living with “severely damaged” lungs. Across California, almost 10,000 people continue to die each year from sickness resulting from air-pollution.
Today, ozone levels in L.A. are 40 percent of what they were in 1970 — and that’s with double the cars. But on a bad day the air is still pretty rough, and it can be easy to see why the metropolis has earned its derisive nickname: Smell-A.
