Smoglandia: Smog was killing L.A., and a Caltech chemist found the murder weapon in our garages
This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.
Just like a Hollywood crime movie — everyone, everything was a suspect.The crime: smog.The victims: any Angeleno with a set of lungs.That master of detective stories, Raymond Chandler, described the crime scene in 1953, in “The Long Goodbye”:“The weather was hot and sticky, and the acid sting of the smog had crept as far west as Beverly Hills.
From the top of Mulholland Drive, you could see it leveled out all over the city like a ground mist.When you were in it you could taste it and smell it and it made your eyes smart.
Everybody was griping about it.… Everything was the fault of the smog.
If the canary wouldn’t sing, if the milkman was late, if the Pekingese had fleas, if an old coot in a starched collar had a heart attack on the way to church, that was the smog.…”Smoglandia is a four-part series on L.A.’s historic battle with smog.Smog went on throttling Southern California — through the 1940s, into the 1950s, getting worse, not better.
A magazine called National Defense, published in Arcadia, warned in 1948, “If you value your life, your health and comfort, stay away from California, or at least stay away from … Los Angeles County.”Local air pollution authorities, possessing little power and even less solid science, singled out oil industries, factories, manufacturers and chemical companies, and they weren’t wrong — just looking through the opposite end of the telescope.Some gave up and said the only solution to smog was a good strong wind.Nothing was too minor to blame.
One of L.A.’s pollution chiefs warned that “anyone who smokes a pipe, even, contributes to the smog menace.” At one point housewives were admonished not to shake their dust mops outdoors lest that contribute to smog.But a Caltech biochemist was about to deliver some good news … and some bad news.This is the second of a series of articles based on the Smoglandia podcas...