'Clean Air Started Here': Sonora, PA Smog Disaster, Halloween 1948 Inspired Environmental Protection

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. I have a friend who grew up in Greensburg, PA,

outside of Pittsburgh. Recently he told me of going into the city of Pittsburgh with his mother when he was perhaps five or seven years old -- so this would have been 1953-1955 or so -- and thinking that it was always night time in Pittsburgh. That's how polluted it was, and how dark the skies were.

I used to read old Life Magazines, and I recall an issue in the late 1930's (it started in November, 1936 and I cannot recall with certaintly when this article appeared) that showed the pollution and dark skies in the middle of the day somewhere in the Midwest. That's what factories produced back then. For far too long people simply accepted that as the normal and acceptable outcome of "progress".