Strollers in the vicinity of Radio City ran hurriedly for cover last night when one of New York's freakish "smog" storms descended on the area bounded by Fifth and Lexington Avenues and Forty-ninth and Fifty-fourth Streets.  "Smog," as defined by the Weather Bureau, is composed of fine particles of dust that become moistened and descend in localized areas.

The descent started at 9:40 P.M. and lasted ten minutes.  People rushed for shelter into near-by hotels and shops where, by using handkerchiefs or paper napkins dipped in water, they removed the smudge from their eyes and clothes.  Automobiles parked in the district were covered with spots that became a powdery dust when dry. It was the third such "storm" since midsummer and occurred when the moon was shining.

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 2--It is no longer a secret along the West Coast that Los Angeles, the City of Sunshine, is worried about its "smog" problem.  The war brought industrialization to Southern California and more than a year after the war's end thousands of hopeful persons from the Middle West and elsewhere pour daily into that land of promise.  But the war also brought "smog."

The word was coined to provide a name for a combination of fog and smoke and chemical fumes which began in 1943 to cause concern to city officials and the Chamber of Commerce.

The Los Angeles Times, which this month has been campaigning vigorously for official action to rid the city and county of its "smog," stated blithely in its news columns that "for years now the sun has been something of a mystery here."  The Bureau of Air Pollution Control has been busy and the District Attorney's office has filed suits against a long list of manufacturing companies under provisions of the State Code relating to public nuisances....

Thank you for taking to heart the letter of "Constant Reader" on the subject of smoke in New York city.

We New Yorkers are so accustomed to suffer in silence and so apathetic, or just plain lazy, in the matter of correcting wrongs that I applaud "Constant Reader" for voicing a protest over this annoyance of smoke, which is laughingly called "smog" and treated as a good joke on us.

I live in the Highbridge section of the Bronx, and every day I remove layers of black soot from my window sills.  My curtains are black with soot within a week after they are put up bright and clean.  Instead of breathing good, clean air, my lungs are congested from inhaling the soot from smoking chimneys as well as from locomotives which stop at the Sedgwick Avenue station on the railroad that passes through the city.

The soot is a menace to all of us.  Please keep hammering away on this subject and if enough people become interested some good will come of your efforts.

A GRATEFUL READER.
New York, Jan. 3, 1947.

PITTSBURGH, Sept. 30--After 107 years of campaigns for smoke control, this city began at midnight tonight a full-scale ban on the pall that is so familiar in this area.  The measure went into effect without fanfare.

quiet inauguration of the smoke ban unquestionably was due to the many years of campaigning by civic groups and the newspapers to make Pittsburgh, the world's steel center, a clean city.  Moreover, in recent weeks the local press has carried stories daily, along with feature articles explaining to the public how the law will function and how the public can fire furnaces to comply with it.

The drive against the smoke began as early as 1840, according to newspapers of that peirod [sic], with the pubic-spirited citizens complaining bitterly about the "sulphorous vapours" that filled the air.

Pittsburgh too has been credited with coining a new word in the English language--"smog"--a combination of smoke and fog.  The smog season usually starts with the beginning of chilly weather in September, and continues on into the spring.  There usually have been several wintry days in which the smog has kept the sun from shining on Pittsburgh until as late as 11 A.M.

City officials, led by Mayor David L. Lawrence, have cautioned, however, that the 700,000 residents of Pittsburgh should not expect micracles [sic] overnight, and that it might take months before the full effects of the smoke-control law will be noticed.

The new code requires that only smokeless fuels be used within the city, or smoke-burning stokers be installed if high volatile bituminous coal is used.  Bituminous coal, much of it mined in the Pittsburgh district, may be delivered to homes, apartment houses, schools, churches, office buildings and commercial pants by licensed city dealers only if those establishments are equipped mechanically to burn the fuel smokelessly.

Within the last two years all buildings, railroads and commercial plants, except the 150,000 one and two-family houses in the city, have come under the smoke law, passed in 1941, but its effectiveness was delayed until after the war.  The dwellings are the last to come under the ordinance, and there were many householders tonight checking their furnaces to abide by the provisions.

Thirteen smoke inspectors have been assigned to check the 57-square-mile area, but it is generally recognized that the staff will have to be enlarged....

DONORA, Pa., Oct. 30--Eighteen persons died in this steel mill town of 15,000 today and health authorities said their deaths apparently were the indirect result of a smothering "smog."

Mrs. Cora Vernon, executive director of the American Red Cross, said an emergency hospital was being set up immediately.  She reported that the Charleroi-Monessen Hospital at Charleroi was filled to capacity and estimated that at least 50 persons were being treated as a direct result of the smog.

"It's very hard to breathe," said Rudy Schwerha, a member of the Board of Health.  "It's impossible to determine just how many residents are sick, but the doctors and nurses can't keep up with the situation."

All of the deaths today occurred unexpectedly after a fog which has prevailed for several days became exceptionally heavy.  Smoke from the industrial community mixed with it to create a thick smog.

"The deaths seem to have hit people who were suffering from cardiac or asthmatic conditions," Mr. Schwerha said.  "There's no doubt the smog has been the cause."

Dr. James Lau, superintendent of the Charleroi-Monessen Hospital, said extra beds had been placed in the corridors to accommodate patients.  He added:

"We can't take another patient.  All day long I've been shuttling back and forth between the hospital and Pittsburgh getting extra equipment.  We've got eleven oxygen tents in operation tonight, compared to our usual three.  So far, however, we've been lucky--none of the deaths has occured [sic] at the hospital."

Mrs. Vernon said the American Legion is cooperating in taking patients to the emergency hospital.  Most are receiving injections of adrenalin, she added.

Dr. Lau said the smoggy conditions had been prevalent throughout the district, which is heavily industrialized.  Donora is about thirty miles south of Pittsburgh.  In that big steel center considerable smog has been noted in the past few days, but experts say recent smoke control measures have reduced the smog's intensity.

BRUSSELS, Belgium, Oct. 31--The fatal "smog" which blanketed Donora, Pa., for two days recalled for many Belgians today the mysterious Meuse Valley fog which caused more than seventy deaths in 1930.

As the fog settled on the industrial area between Liege and Juy, in southeastern Belgium, Dec. 1, 1930, residents were seized by a strange illness.

After weeks of study an official commission published a report in January, 1931, that the fog was mainly responsible for the casualties, which occurred only among those over 55 years old or sufferers from heart and asthmatic disorders.  Few if any children were affected.

The report said the absence of any wind had made possible the concentration at ground level of sulphuric-acid fumes produced by the oxidation of hydrogen sulphide.  This had come from fumes from industrial and domestic furnaces burning coal with high sulphur content.

DONORA, Pa., Oct. 31--Several hundred asthma and cardiac sufferers remaining in this stricken town were evacuated to other areas tonight as a welcome rain helped to clear the air of a smog believed to have contributed to the deaths of twenty residents.  The mysterious air-borne plague struck yesterday.

Low-hanging smog over an eight-mile area was considered a factor in the deaths, which were chiefly among elderly persons.  A late check indicated that probably two more names would be added to the list of dead.

There also is the threat of pneumonia which might affect other residents of this community of 12,000 in the Monongahela River valley, about twenty-five miles southeast of Pittsburgh, according to Dr. I. Hope Alexander, city health director of Pittsburgh, who aided in treating stricken residents.  About 400 other persons were stricken by the mysterious smog but were treated in time to prevent fatal effects.

Norbert Hochman, a chemist attached to the Pittsburgh Smoke Prevention Bureau, advanced the theory that there was definitely enough sulphur trioxide to be toxic in the air in Donora, particularly close to the zinc works of the American Steel and Wire Company, a United States Steel Corporation subsidiary.

He explained that sulphur dioxide is formed in the process here.  In contact with air this becomes sulphur trioxide, a deadly gas.

Donora had lived in a twilight world, under an unusual envelope of dense smog, since Wednesday, but no ill effects were noticed until early yesterday morning.

About 2 A.M. the town's eight doctors were swamped with telephone calls for help from asthma sufferers and anxious relatives.  In a short time hospitals in the area were filled to capacity.

Doctors and emergency workers reported that patients showed similar symptoms, a gasping for air and complaints of unbearable chest pains.  At the height of the alarm the borough of Donora set up an emergency station in the community center, were [sic] victims were treated until they could be taken to the already overcrowded hospitals.  Volunteer firemen from neighboring tows assisted Donora's fire department in getting oxygen to victims of the choking smog who were unable to reach aid otherwise.

Although earlier reports that chemical fumes were partially responsible for the death toll have not been confirmed, Dr. William Rongaus, a physician and member of the Donora Board of Health, was bitter in his denunciation of atmospheric conditions.

"It's murder," he said.  "There's nothing else you can call it.  There was smog in Monessen, too, but it didn't kill people there the way this did.  There's something in the air here that isn't found anywhere else.

Monassen is about four miles from Donora on the other side of the Monongahela....

Meanwhile, state, county and other officials joined with health authorities in an extensive investigation into the causes of the fatal smog....

DONORA, Pa. Oct. 31--Solemn groups stood outside churches and hospitals here today to discuss the silent death that struck down residents here yesterday in a low-lying smog that had enveloped the community since Wednesday.

Others had left town by scores to seek high land in an effort to escape the fumes.

Hope for rain, expressed all day, was satisfied shortly after 6 P.M.

"I couldn't see my hand in front of my face yesterday when I went to work," said one resident.  "If only it would rain.  Why isn't there any wind?"....

Frank M. Matthews, a newspaper man from Pittsburgh, reported that the odor of the "smog" could be detected at 2,000 feet as his plane flew over Donora from Harrisburg early today.

Among those treated and released at the height of the "smog" were the family of Stan Musial, outfielder for the St. Louis Cardinals, who lives here.

Donora is an industrial city of about 12,000 situated at a bend in the Monongahela River.  It forms with its neighbors, Charleroi, Monessen, Clairton and Monongahela City, one of the most active steel fabricating sections of the country.

The Department of Health assured New Yorkers yesterday that there was no danger of a deadly smog settling over this area.  Jerome Trichter, Assistant Commissioner in charge of environmental sanitation, said that there were no potential sources of poisonous fumes such as apparently blanketed Donora, Pa., and that the Weather Bureau reported that the average wind velocity in this area was too great to allow industrial smoke to accumulate in a dangerous concentration.

DONORA, Pa., Nov. 1(AP)--A state health official reported tonight that he had found "small quantities" of poison gas in the air over this industrial town where nineteen sufferers from asthmatic and cardiac afflictions died suddenly over the week-end.

Dr. Joseph Shilen of Harrisburg, head of the Industrial Hygiene Bureau of the State Board of Health, said his preliminary tests showed both sulphur dioxide and sulphur trioxide.

He said his air samples were taken early yesterday morning before the smog--a mixture of smoke and fog--had lifted to any great degree....

Meanwhile, citizens turned to an old-fashioned town meeting to seek ways of combatting smog, which may believe responsible for the nineteen deaths....

Some smokestacks which usually spew smoke and exhaust waste into the Monongahela river Valley where Donora lies were idle today.  the American Steel & Wire Company, subsidiary of United States Steel, shut down its smelter works to help beat the smog.

A company spokesman said the smelter works would remain idle until a report had been received from State Health Department chemists and an agency employed by the steel company.

"We don't even know for sure whether industrial smoke had anything to do with it any more than the normal fog," Burgess Chambon remarked.

Donora, Pa., made the front page in last week's newspapers because a low-hanging smog (combination of smoke and fog) hung over an area of eight square miles....

Industrial fog of the kind that almost smothered Donora is produced when waste gases carry sulphur dioxide, sulphur trioxide or sulphuric acid into the atmosphere.  The two poisonous gases and the acid were found in the air of Donora, but the health authorities talked as if this were unusual.

March, 1929, was just as bad for the Atlantic seaboard of the United States.  On the 14th of that month the wind swung around from west to east, and so a steady stream of water vapor came rolling in from New Jersey northward.  When the wind swung southward later a murky, warm fog settled down over New York City.  Transatlantic liners had to anchor, whether they were inbound or outbound.  Even ferryboats had to stop.  This was a dirty pea-soup fog.

Sir Napier Shaw, an English meteorologist, once remarked that it takes only a thimbleful of water to make a hogshead of fog.  It is easy to understand this when it is remembered that fog droplets are small, generally less than 0.002 inch in diameter.  The nuclei are still smaller and constitute scarcely one part by weight in 10,000 of fog.  To produce a thick, clammy fog a cubic meter of air need not contain more than 0.1 to 0.4 gram of water as fog droplets.

Samples of foggy air have been collected , and with the aid of these it has been determined that a block of dense fog 3 feet wide, 6 feet high and 100 feet long contains less than one-eleventh of a glassful of water, distributed in sixty billion drops.

Fumes could be passed through a fine filter, but commercial dusts of smelters and cement works could not be easily removed in this way.  Professor Gucker therefore favors electrical precipitation--that is, high-voltage charges which would make it possible to draw individual particles toward an electrode.  This is the principle of the well-known Cottrell precipitator.  Tons of dust can thus be deposited in a day.

Heat can also throw down fine particles.  If one wall of a vessel is heated and the opposite wall is chilled, the particles will settle out rapidly on the cold surface.  In this manner streaks of dust are deposited on the wall behind a radiator.  The wall is cooler than the air next to it.

DONORA, Pa., Nov. 7 (AP)--Twenty-one residents who became ill in the smothering smog which resulted in nineteen deaths last week in this mill town will soon leave for a week's rest in North Carolina.

An invitation for as many as fifty to spend a week in the South, with all expenses paid, was extended soon after the disaster by the Junior Chamber of Commerce of Wilmington, N.C., and the Chamber of Commerce of Wrightsville Beach, N.C....

DONORA, Pa., Nov. 12 (AP)--This borough intends to fix responsibility for its twenty smog deaths, or spend $10,000 in the attempt.

Burgess August Chambon said today that if the State Board of Health's report does not trace the source of the disaster the borough would hire chemical experts for a separate probe....

CLEVELAND, Nov. 16 (UP)--The American Steel and Wire Company said today it was "certain" its zinc works at Donora, Pa., was not responsible for the smog linked to twenty deaths there last month.

The company, in a statement released here and carried as an advertisement in the Donora Herald-American, declared that "our conviction from the start has been that the zinc works was not the cause of the disaster.

"We are certain," it added, "that the principal offender in the tragedy was the unprecedentedly heavy fog which blanked the borough for five consecutive days--a phenomenon which no resident could recall ever happening before."....

PITTSBURGH, Nov. 18--An exhaustive medical survey of smog conditions in the Monongahela River Valley sector was promised here today by the United States Public Health Service.  It was announced at the annual meeting of the Industrial Hygiene Foundation at the Mellon Institute....

Dr. James G. Townsend, chief of the Industrial Hygiene Division of the United States Public Health Service, told the meeting at the Mellon Institute that the smog that struck Donora was "a problem that transcends Donora and is nation-wide in scope."

He said his division's study would be a thorough one, with tests of the people, plants and animal life, and industrial process in the area.

"We have to get over the idea that smog is just a nuisance," he said.  "There is no condition confronting us that is more terrifying."

CINCINNATI, Nov. 19--Back from Donora, Pa., scene of late October lethal smog which killed twenty residents, Dr. Clarence A. Mills of the University of Cincinnait, an expert on the effect of air pollution on the respiratory system, reported here today his belief that many other cities of the country had the setting for similar disaster.

Head of the Department of Experimental Medicine in theuniversity's College of Medicine, he has studyied air pollution problems in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, Nashville, Birmingham and Atlanta.

A house-to-house survey is being made for Dr. Mills by the Borough Council of Donora to reveal such details for most of Donora's population as who was affected by the death-dealing smog; tobacco-smoking habits, and past histories of individual respiratory damage.

The fact that only five of the twenty Donora victims were women follows a pattern, which Dr. Mills has noted elsewhere in his researches.  Women are less susceptible than men to smog's harmful effects.

"Donora's air pollution is probably the worst in the country, with her hill and valley topography which tends to pocket the flue products down over the city when there is no wind, but the same disaster might just as well have hit any one of many other cities of the country," Dr. Mills said.

"The remarkable thing about the Donora disaster," he added, "is not that so many people should have been affected but that so many should have been able to survive in the poisoned air up to now.  If Donora can work out a formula to remove this threat to life and health, then other afflicted cities will take hope.

"The Donora disaster shows how very close many of our industrialized cities have come to a killing pollution level."

WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 (UP)--Specialists of the United States Public Health Service will begin an investigation in Donora, Pa., next week to determine whether the recent air pollution caused the mysterious deaths of twenty persons.  Dr. James G. Townsend, chief of the industrial hygiene division said the five-member team would "try to find some common denominator of symptoms."

CLEVELAND, Dec. 21 (AP)--The combination of smoke and fog that killed nineteen persons in the mill town of Donora, Pa., will be investigated by the Kettering Laboratory of Applied Physiology of the University of Cincinnati.  The American Steel and Wire Company, which operates the largest Donora industry, announced today it had engaged the laboratory "as a further step in attempting to clear up the uncertainty surrounding the deaths" of the victims of the five-day smog last October.

CINCINNATI, Dec. 24 (AP)--The Donora, Pa., smog, which killed twenty persons last Oct. 30 barely missed being a "major catastrophe," Dr. Clarence A. Mills of the University of Cincinnati reported tonight.

"A large part of Donora's population of 13,500 was made ill by the smog," said Dr. Mills, in reporting preliminary findings in his investigation of the disaster.

"A slightly higher poison concentration in the air or a few hours longer time and the whole community might have been left almost devoid of life."

Dr. Mills is head of the Department of Experimental Medicine in the university's College of Medicine and is an expert on harmful effects of air pollution and on the effect of climate changes on civilizations.

He said fumes from a Donora zinc smelter were suspected of causing the deadly smog.

His findings are based on a house-to-house canvass still being conducted by the borough council at Donora.

"More than 5,000 of Donora's 13,500 inhabitants are being found affected by the poison smog, in addition to the twenty human deaths and roughly 800 animals killed," Dr. Mills said.

"Of the 7,670 residents now questioned, 3,212 reported serious effects on that fatal night; 603 of these were treated by physicians and 277 others begged unsuccessfully for such aid, many of them receiving treatment from city firemen and Red Cross workers."

Dr. Mills said that investigators making the survey report that "many of the 4,459 who claimed no smog damage were, in reality, affected but feared for their jobs if they so indicated.

"The Donora house-to-house survey, undertaken at my suggestion, is filling in the details of a mass air poisoning which very nearly reached major proportions."

Warning of the dangers of "industrial pollution poured out into the air people must breathe," Dr. Mills said the chance of early effective action to clear the Donora air seems very slight.

"The CIO's $10,000 gift to the Borough Council," he added, "shows signs of accomplishing little beyond the cost of this house-to-house survey. * * *

"A whole avalanche of damage suits are being filed against the zinc plant by farmers and stock-growers of the devastated area.  If the 5,000 persons affected by the smog join in these suits, we may well see another zinc plant finally closed by those it had poisoned for years."

Dr. Mills said the Donora smelter now is operating "at lower oven temperatures and at about two-thirds the output previous to the killing smog. * * *

"All near-by residents assert that conditions are now nothing like they were before.  And these are the weeks when the valley air is being sampled for poisonous materials."

In Donora, Charles M. Stacey, Board of Health president, said:

"I think statements concerning prospective destruction of the entire community are highly exaggerated.  Of course, if the smog had persisted we probably would have had more ill--and even more deaths.  But I don't think all of us were endangered."

Mr. Stacey conceded, however, that Dr. Mils was "about correct" in the portion of his preliminary findings which claimed 603 persons were treated for smog effects.

Mr. Stacey also sharply disputed Dr. Mills' statement that many of the 4,459 who claimed no smog damage were, in reality, affected but feared for their jobs if they so indicated.

"Some people have refused our borough investigators information, but I don't see why it would be in fear of their jobs--they have the union to protect them."

SMOG--
Up to 77 per cent of all persons over 50 years of age and up to 52 per cent of those under 50 were affected by the near-catastrophic poison smog which hit Donora, Pa., and environs in late October, says Dr. Clarence A. Mills of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.  The fatal Pennsylvania smog killed twenty persons and hundreds of animals....

Years of experience in St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and other cities have shown the futility of attempting to control air pollution without adequate legislation, [Dr. Clarence A. Mills of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine] says.  The striking benefits which come from a properly drawn anti-pollution ordinance backed up by an awakened pubic consciousness have been demonstrated, it is pointed out.

DONORA, Pa., March 23 (AP)--Conditions prevailing during a death-dealing smog in this mill town may be duplicated during a two-day test period, health officials said today.  The purpose would be to find out what was in the air during five days last October when twenty-one persons died.

DONORA, Pa., April 19 (AP)--About ninety residents reported today that they had developed new wheezes and coughs as the Federal Government tested industrial fumes in Pennsylvania's "smog-death" city.  The United States Public Health Service is trying to find what was in the air last October when a smoke-fog blanket settled down on Donora and twenty-two persons died of suffocation.

To do this, the service had the American Steel and Wire Company resume operation yesterday at its zinc plant, which had been idle since the tragedy.  Dr. William Rongaus, Donora Borough Health Officer, said about twelve patients told him they were suffering effects "like the early symptoms during the smog."

Dr. Rongaus emphasized that he did not believe there was a sufficient concentration of fumes in the air to cause anyone serious harm.

In Webster, across the Monongahela River, Allen Kline, secretary of the Webster Society for Better Living, said twenty-five residents required medical treatment.  About half of them, he added, left town tonight and said they would not come back till the four-day test was over.

A Webster nurse said she treated two persons for nausea and headaches, which she attributed to the "fumes."  She added that she had received phone calls from fifty-six other persons seeking advice on similar symptoms.

Mr. Kline said the Webster society, at an emergency meeting tonight, urged that all children be kept home from school until the test was over.  He said the society would "assume all responsibility for absences," providing parents kept their children "indoors" or took them out of town.

George Clayton, chief of the Federal field party making the test, said fumes in the air tonight "undoubtedly are strong enough to cause discomfort to some individuals."  He added that he did not consider the concentration now in the air as dangerous.  Should it become so, he said, the test would be halted at once.

Abe Celapino, president of the Webster society, which arranged with the United States Government for the test, said members felt it was succeeding almost "too well."

DONORA SMOG--
It simply isn't true, as current reports have it, that the health of almost a hundred persons has been affected by experimental smog with which United States Public Health Service technicians are seeking to determine at Donora, Pa., the cause of last fall's disaster, says Dr. Leonard A. Scheele, Surgeon General of the service.  Officials of the USPHS requested every doctor in the area surrounding Donora and Webster, directly across the Monongahela River, to report immediately any illness that might conceivably be related to the increase in smoke and fumes.  Up to the time this note went to press no doctor had any such illness to report.  Three persons telephone that they had felt sickish during the test period, but their troubles could not be traced to increased smoke and fumes from the zinc plant that the USPHS is using in its experiment.

CIGARETTE FILTER--
Dr. Peter Schlumbohm, who has applied his knowledge of chemistry to inventing half-a-dozen household devices based on principles embodied in chemical apparatus, comes out with a new kind of cigarette holder that filters the tar, pyridine and heat-cracked nicotine out of a cigarette.  Rolled-up paper, cartridges and cotton plugs are not good enough, he holds, because they leave too many by-pass channels for smoke.  So he uses wet-proof filter-paper, which is something new in cigarette holders.  His disk of filter-paper is not much bigger than a quarter.  It is folded in the usual way to for a cone which is locked into a brass funnel. Strange as it may seem, the smoke passes easily through the paper and not the slightest whiff is by-passed.  After three cigarettes the paper is so tarred that it has to be thrown away.  A fresh filter-paper is inserted in a few seconds.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13--Air pollution as a major national health problem was made the subject today of a 173-page report by the Public Health Service.  The report dealt specifically with the Donora, Pa., smog deaths a year ago.

Oscar R. Ewing, Federal Security Administrator, told a press conference that the Donora report proved "for the first time that air contamination in an industrial community can actually cause acute disabling diseases."

Surgeon General Leonard A. Scheele of the Public Health Service said there should be immediate research both into air pollution per se and the effect of polluted air in shutting out healthful rays of the sun.  He reported that he was asking Congress today for $250,000 as an added appropriation for this work....

Of these, 2,148 were mildly affected; 2322 were moderately affected, and 1,440 or 10.4 per cent of the population, seriously affected.

Age was found to be an important factor.  Only about one-tenth of the children under 6 showed any severe symptoms.  Half the adult population showed some affection.  Half of those over 65 who were affected became seriously ill.  Records of thirty-two of the fifty hospital cases were intensively studied.  More than two-thirds of these persons were over 55 years old.

No one chemical was found to be the cause of the deaths and illnesses, and the report attributed the smog cases to a combination of contaminants.  However, sulphur dioxide was listed as chief culprit, come from railroads, steamboats, and homes as well as from the Donora steel and wire and zinc plants.

The study made by twenty-five scientists, much of it by the personal interview method, revealed that Donora in all probability had experienced a previous death-dealing smog in April, 1945, during which the death rate doubled, although the deaths were not then attributed to the atmospheric condition.

"We as mill workers who live in these places don't want to fool around in Legislatures to get action," he said....

[He] called attention to the fact that the first ten sources of air contamination named in the report were industrial sources, and said that "these were the killers, and not the domestic heating systems and local steam locomotives named later on."....

In recommendations made to the town of Donora and the state of Pennsylvania, the Public Health Service advised reduction of the amount of particulate matter both from industrial stacks and from domestic heating systems, steam locomotives and steamboats.

Dr. Scheele said that all this reduction of air pollution was possible from an engineering point of view.

Another recommendation was to "establish a program of weather forecasts to alert the community of impending adverse weather conditions so that adequate measures can be taken to protect the populace."

PASADENA, Calif., Nov. 10--Blame for the persistence of noxious "smogs" in many American cities was placed by a leading air-pollution expert today on official mismanagement, misguided public enthusiasm and selfish industrialists.

Addressing the first national Air Pollution Symposium, Dr. Louis McCabe of the United States Bureau of Mines said that generally municipalities had underestimated the extent of the smog problem, citizens had been deluded by an extensive "folklore" about smog, and industrialists had thwarted campaigns against the nuisance....

PASADENA, Calif., Nov. 11--Persons fearful of death or serious disease as a result of ordinary city smogs were reassured today by air-pollution scientists.

Addressing the first National Air Pollution Symposium, sponsored by a group of California universities, the experts said there was no evidence that smog would engender lung cancer or other pulmonary or respiratory ailments.

They did not, however, discount the smog problem.  With frequent references to the recent smog deaths of a score of persons at Donora, Pa., Dr. John H. Foulger, director of the Haskell Laboratories of Industrial Toxicology of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. at Wilmington, Del., emphasized that even ostensibly innocuous chemicals, in combination in the air, could be fatal to persons not in good health....

The danger of smog is not in chemical poisoning, Dr. Foulger said, but in the mechanical bodily effects of its irritants, which may even include the patient's drowning in his own secretions.

"No degree of 'cleaning up' our cities can be considered satisfactory fro the medical point of view," he summarized, "unless it results in an atmosphere the breathing of which imposes no physiological load upon the least resistant inhabitant--the sufferer from respiratory or cardiovascular diseases."....

P.W. Zimmerman of the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research at Yonkers, N.Y. said that test alfalfa plants had shown no damage from the sulphur dioxide in the city air, and that there were even indications it might help sulphur-deficient plants.

The two-day symposium ended today.

PITTSBURGH, Nov. 18--Air pollution with special attention to the Donora smog disaster, came in for careful scrutiny today on the closing day of the Industrial Hygiene Foundation meeting at Mellon Institute.

The answers to questions about smog are essential, both for nuisance and health reasons, H.H. Schrenk, research director of the foundation, said.

"The 'know-how' to test smog is available but it must be organized and directed," he said.  "There is no evidence that indicates some unusual substance was emitted or accidental occurrence took place which produced unusual quantities of a particular substance during the Donora episode."....

Dr. Raymond Hussey, dean of the School of Occupational Health, Wayne University, Detroit, said physicians are concerned with the public relations of situations like the Donora smog.

"Too much is unknown about the chronic disturbances resulting from smog," he said.  "The effects on different people vary, but it is apparent persons with heart or pulmonary diseases are more susceptible."....

G. Edward Pendray of the New York public relations firm of Pendray & Leibert said it is a mistake for an industry causing pollution to deny it.  Rather, he said, the company should be ready to cooperate honestly with the community in a program to clean up the air and streams.

If industries fail to accept their responsibility, which, he warned, would be a very expensive one, Mr. Pendray asserted they could look forward to being forced to do by regulation what they should have done long ago voluntarily.

"No money will be saved in the end," he said, "and good public relations will have been lost."

A survey of fifty leading companies showed that they had spent $35,000,000 on pollution control since 1947 and planned to spend $32,500,000 more in the next two years....

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 10--A twenty-day scourge of smog in the Los Angeles Basin finally ended this week, but left in its wake an equally acrid pall of public controversy.

Citizens were so vexed that they began discussing, for the first time, compulsory shutdowns of fume-emitting industrial plants during periods when weather vagaries throw an atmospheric "lid" over the city.

Industrialists were equally vehement in pronouncing this impossible....

Smoke, smog, and soot are health problems, and are no longer considered "mere nuisances," J.J. Bloomfield, assistant chief, Industrial Hygiene Division, United States Public Health Service, declared yesterday at a luncheon meeting of the Women's City Club at the New Weston Hotel.

"Air pollution," Mr. Bloomfield said, "for years was considered to be merely a nuisance.  Last year's incident at Donora, Pa., where twenty persons lost their lives and more than 6,000 were taken sick because of impurities in the air, taught us a vital lesson."

Air pollution can be fatal and it presents a 'complex problem," Mr. Bloomfield said, adding that research by Public Health Service men sent into the Donora area had resulted in specific findings and possible corrective measures.

"The Health Service is on the verge of doing something constructive about it," he declared.

Mr. Bloomfield noted that the Health Service had requested Congress to appropriate $750,000 to conduct surveys on air pollution.  He declared, however, that surveys were not new, recalling that in 1927 his organization had shown that 60 per cent of the sunlight in New York City was lost in soot.

The big job of city housecleaning is one of education, the official declared.

"It is a long range program with many complexities," he said.  "We know this however, there is no substitute for pure air.  You can't say that about water."

Somewhat at variance with Mr. Bloomfield was George Minasian, engineer for the Consolidated Edison Company.  He said the problem was "not too serious," holding that automobiles, buses and other vehicles in New York presented a far greater hazard.

Mr. Minasian pointed out that air pollution studies made by the Edison Company since 1936 have cost the company $20,000,000.  "We are anxious, of course, to help correct the conditions and feel that we have made great strides in recent years," he said.  Industry, generally speaking, he added, has very little improper combustion for matters of economics alone....

PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 20--The "smog" problem, which has caused growing concern along with eye irritation and poor visibility in Los Angeles County in recent years, was labeled today one for which industry and the public must share responsibility.

After a survey lasting a year, the Stanford Research Institute concluded that the chief cause of the atmospheric condition known as smog was the "incomplete combustion of nearly 50,000 tons a day of fuels and rubbish."  At least 2,280 tons of chemicals, it found, are released into the air every day by reaction and combination and these may result in the so-called smog effects such as eye irritation and reduced visibility.

Sixty per cent of these materials, according to the Institute's findings, result from activities of the pubic, including the driving of automobiles and buses, the burning of backyard trash, the heating of homes, stores and office buildings.  Industries of Los Angeles County, it said, accounted for the remaining 40 per cent of the chemicals.

The Institute's study was made under the sponsorship of the Western Oil and Gas Association....

PITTSBURGH, April 17--The American Steel and Wire Company made an out-of-court settlement today of about 130 damage suits that asked $4,643,000 as a result of the 1948 Donora smog disaster in which twenty-two persons died and 5,910 were made ill.

Although the company, a subsidiary of the United States Steel Corporation, did not disclose the amount it would pay in settlement, it was understood to be $235,000 or slightly more than 5 per cent asked in the suits, which charged that fumes from Donora zinc smelter plant of American Steel and Wire caused the fatalities.

In a statement confirming the settlement, the company, however, did not admit this responsibility....

Mr. [L.F.] McGlincy [manager of operations for American Steel and Wire in this district] asserted that American Steel and Wire was prepared to prove that the principal cause of the smog disaster was "the freak weather condition which prevailed for an unprecedented period of five days, with temperature inversion which served as a lid keeping within the valley all of the smog coming from the homes, railroads, the steamboats, and the exhaust from automobiles, as well as the effluents from its plants."....

Within a year after the [Donora smog] disaster, the market value of Donora property, principally residential, had declined 9-1/2 per cent....

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 14--Smog is more of a nuisance than a serious menace to life and health, Dr. Ralph E. Copeland of San Marino declared today at the annual convention of the American College of Osteopathic Internists.

"Of course," Dr. Copeland said, "we must admit what [sic] when smog is bad enough to irritate the eyes it also must cause temporary irritation to the nose, throat and lungs.  But I doubt if smog causes any more permanent injury than does tobacco smoke.  But there is no proof either way."....