Books
Smogtown
by Chip Jacobs and William J. Kelly
The Overlook Press, 2008
384 pages, $26.95
On July 8, 1943, a thick blanket of gray mist engulfed Los Angeles, burning eyes and searing throats. The gaseous assault was so sudden that some thought the Japanese were beginning an invasion with chemical weapons. But the suffocating pall wasn’t foreign—it was smog. And so begins Smogtown, by Chip Jacobs and William J. Kelly, a history of the fight against air pollution in Southern California.
The authors deliver a blow-by-blow account of subsequent struggles to find the source of the smog and return to Los Angeles the clear blue skies that had drawn so many westward in the first place. The themes and characters are all too familiar: relentless economic growth versus the environment and health; timid politicians or, worse, political leaders who fail to recognize the magnitude of the problem; businesses and industries that care only about the bottom line; a public reluctant to sacrifice an unsustainable lifestyle; and the regulatory agencies caught in between.
The primary players include Caltech’s own Arnold Beckman (PhD ’28) and Arie J. Haagen-Smit, a chemistry professor from 1937 until his retirement in 1971. As a science advisor to the city, Beckman recruited Haagen-Smit, now considered the father of smog control, to figure out the smog’s underlying chemistry. Haagen-Smit determined that hydrocarbons, spewed out by cars and factories, react with nitrogen oxides in the air and form ozone, one of the principal components of smog. (See Haagen-Smit’s article in the December 1950 issue of E&S.)
Beckman’s leadership and advocacy, backed by Haagen-Smit’s research, led to stricter regulations targeting hydrocarbon burning. Thanks to their work and the efforts of many others, the L.A. basin now has much cleaner air and bluer skies, even though the population has more than tripled since 1940.
But above all, the book is a cautionary tale. It’s taken more than 60 years of political battles and, to a lesser degree, scientific research to achieve the relatively clean air we have. The authors warn that the same story is repeating itself—but now with greenhouse gases, whose short-term impact is much less immediate and tangible than the effects of that toxic haze of 1943. In the end, they argue, the only solution to the problems of climate change is to revamp our values and lifestyles. The question, then, is whether we can learn from history—or whether we’re doomed to repeat it. —MW
