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Throwback Thursdays: Of 20th-century-era smog, gas masks, obscured L.A. skylines [1]

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Date: 2024-06-20  

Hydrocarbons, Nitrogen Oxides, Ozone, Volatile Organic Compounds. Now take those, throw in just the right amount of heat and light, and what you have is a recipe for making one of the worst toxic-air brews (or stews — take your pick): smog.

Smog. That was what was throwing scientists for a loop way back in the early 1940s in Los Angeles and its environs. And, what was worse as if to be adding insult to injury, these scientists just didn’t know what the source of this scourge was.

What they suspected at first was that the toxic pollution that was concentrated in area air which, by the way, was causing to those exposed to have watery or burning eyes, headaches, coughing, wheezing, vomiting — just to name several symptoms, was that this air-borne pollution emanated from a butadiene plant. So, in response, the plant was ordered to shut down. That’s how much of a concern this air-despoiling and health-compromising agent was.

But, it was to no avail. The smog persisted.

Now there are those who will dismiss the value and importance of science and scientific analysis, but it was through just such a field of study and analysis that led scientists to determine what the primary source of this smog crap was. Motor vehicles.

Los Angeles and neighboring communities had one of the most extensive electric street and interurban railway networks of any U.S. metropolitan region. And, beginning perhaps as early as the late 1920s in some jurisdictions, these were being dismantled in favor of the promotion of rubber-tired, roadway-based, gasoline- and diesel-powered transportation. We’re talking autos, buses, trucks. And, that’s what started the whole smoke + fog pall-ball rolling to create what had come to be labeled or known as smog (a portmanteau word).

Had the streetcar and interurban network not been eliminated and in fact been expanded, which also translates into the use of internal-combustion-engine-powered surface-based transport vehicles being no way near as pronounced, presumably, then the presence of smog in the area may very well have been far less pervasive or completely non-existent.

Smog, the grayish-brownish- or brownish-grayish-colored airborne miasma that taints air so (it makes it downright ugly and reprehensible if you ask me and want to know the truth) and damages health, has become such a blemish and stain on California’s south coast area air (and that which is elsewhere, like in the Golden State’s San Joaquin Valley, for one), this region has since become known as America’s smog capital.

I got my first bad taste of smog in a manner of speaking on a visit I made from Baltimore, Maryland (then my home) to Anaheim located in Orange County in 1972 in September. It just so happened to be that the region then was dealing with some really, really unhealthy air quality.

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