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The Donora Death Fog : Clean Air and the Tragedy of a Pennsylvania Mill Town
- Author / Creator
- Available as
- Online
- Summary
-
In October 1948, a seemingly average fog descended on the tiny milltown of Donora, Pennsylvania. With a population of fewer thanfifteen thousand, the town's main industry was steel and zincmills-mi...
In October 1948, a seemingly average fog descended on the tiny milltown of Donora, Pennsylvania. With a population of fewer thanfifteen thousand, the town's main industry was steel and zincmills-mills that continually emitted pollutants into the air. Thesix-day smog event left twenty-one people dead and thousands sick.Even after the fog lifted, hundreds more died or were left withlingering health problems. <em>Donora Death Fog</em> details howsix fateful days in Donora led to the nation's first clean air actin 1955, and how such catastrophes can lead to successful policychange. Andy McPhee tells the very human story behind thisecological disaster: how wealthy industrialists built the mills tosupply an ever-growing America; how the town'sresidents-millworkers and their families-willfully ignored thedanger of the mills' emissions; and how the gradual closing of themills over the years following the tragedy took its toll on thetown.
Details
- Creator
- Andy McPhee
- Format
- Books
- Language
- English
- Publication
-
- First edition
- Pittsburgh, Pa : University of Pittsburgh Press, [2023]
- ©2023
- Physical Details
-
- 1 online resource (322 pages)
- ISBNs
- 9780822988564, 9780822966715, 9780822966715
- OCLC
- on1373984525
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Table of Contents -- Front Matter(pp. i-viii) -- Front Matter(pp. i-viii) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.1 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.1 -- Table of Contents(pp. ix-x) -- Table of Contents(pp. ix-x) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.2 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.2 -- FOREWORD(pp. xi-xii) -- FOREWORD(pp. xi-xii) -- Jennifer Richmond-Bryant -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.3 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.3 -- I RELY ON THE WELL-KNOWN EXAMPLE OF DONORA, PENNSYLVANIA, IN the classes I teach on air pollution and environmental regulation. From October 26 to 31, 1948, a cloud of smoke hung over the Monongahela Valley town, trapped by an inversion and the mountainside. Although the emissions of sulfur dioxide, fluorine, and carbon monoxide gases and particulate lead and zinc were accumulating in the stagnant air mass, operations at the Donora Zinc Works and the American Steel & Wire Company continued without interruption during the six-day period. Dense smoke darkened the sky. Nearly half the town of fourteen thousand became sickened. . . -- PREFACE(pp. xiii-xvi) -- PREFACE(pp. xiii-xvi) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.4 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.4 -- PROLOGUE(pp. xvii-xxii) -- PROLOGUE(pp. xvii-xxii) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.5 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.5 -- HELEN STACK WOKE UP THAT FOGGY MORNING WITH A COUGH AND sore throat and thought she must be developing a cold. She dressed and headed down the hill to her work as an office assistant for two of the town's eight physicians, Ralph Koehler and Edward Roth. The attractive twenty-eight-year-old arrived before the doctors, as she typically did. The office looked dirty and was covered in a film of odd dust. "It wasn't just ordinary soot and grit," she explained. "There was something white and scummy mixed up in it. I almost hated to touch it, it was so nasty. . . -- PART I ORIGINS -- 1 DONNER TAKES THE REINS(pp. 5-9) -- 1 DONNER TAKES THE REINS(pp. 5-9) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.6 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.6 -- THE HARDSCRABBLE HILLSIDE TOWN OF DONORA WAS FOUNDED AT THE terminus of America's Gilded Age, a time when a scattering of unimaginably wealthy individuals began coasting on their monetary laurels, soon to become legendary benefactors and philanthropists. They became known as robber barons for the monopolies they created and the legally and ethically questionable tactics they used. They included the likes of J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Mellon and his even wealthier brother, Richard, and John Davison Rockefeller, the wealthiest of them all, even by today's standards. -- The founder of Donora, William Henry Donner, might not have. . . -- 2 BREAKING RECORDS(pp. 10-14) -- 2 BREAKING RECORDS(pp. 10-14) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.7 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.7 -- JUST SO RAN ADVERTISEMENTS IN PITTSBURGH AND OTHER NEWSpapers in the spring of 1900 in preparation for the first sale of home lots in Donora. Groundbreaking for the rod, wire, and nail mills occurred on May 29 that year. Donner planned to locate all of his mills in Donora, on the western side of the Monongahela. None would be built in Webster, the community across the river. He located three types of furnace at the southern end of the mill complex: blast, Bessemer, and open hearth. The three types of furnace each worked somewhat differently and produced steel in a. . . -- 3 A TOWN BLOSSOMS(pp. 15-22) -- 3 A TOWN BLOSSOMS(pp. 15-22) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.8 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.8 -- FROM AUGUST 1900 THROUGH THE END OF 1902 CONSTRUCTION CREWS working on houses and mills fairly owned the streets of Donora. Trees were leveled. Trenches were dug for sewer and water lines. Trucks carrying lumber and building supplies rumbled along dirt roads. -- Such a cacophony of sounds there must have been: hammers slamming nails into two-by-fours, cement mixers rumbling, tractor engines throbbing, the cracking of trees falling and the chorus of snapping branches as the crowns crashed and broke apart, bricks being slapped one by one, row upon row, to create walls for the mills more than a hundred feet. . . -- 4 MAVERICKS NOT ALLOWED(pp. 23-26) -- 4 MAVERICKS NOT ALLOWED(pp. 23-26) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.9 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.9 -- DONORANS HAVE ALWAYS FELT GREAT PRIDE IN HAVING GROWN UP IN neighborhoods of great diversity, yet the town was not without its ethnic or racial problems. The kinds of ethnic and racial tensions that occurred throughout the nation also occurred in Donora. For instance, fueled by a decades-long wave of Jewish immigrants in the latter half of the 1800s, antisemitism nationwide crescendoed between World War I and World War II. Historians Jonathan Sarna and Jonathan Golden of Brandeis University described how antisemitism typically expressed itself: "Private schools, camps, colleges, resorts, and places of employment all imposed restrictions and quotas against. . . -- 5 BUILDING THE MILLS(pp. 27-38) -- 5 BUILDING THE MILLS(pp. 27-38) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.10 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.10 -- DONORA'S MILLS, AS DONNER HAD DEMANDED, HAD GONE UP QUICKLY. The first mills built were the wire and rod mills, completed in the spring of 1900. Those mills produced steel wires and cables for use in bridges, roadways, and buildings. The wire mill consisted of a wire drawing department, wire nail department, wire galvanizing department, and a varnished wire department. Two steel rod mills were built to create bars and solid and hollow rods. -- The wire mill became profitable quickly; it produced wire used in the production of barbed wire, which had proven enormously valuable throughout the late 1800s and,. . . -- 6 PEOPLING THE MILLS(pp. 39-45) -- 6 PEOPLING THE MILLS(pp. 39-45) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.11 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.11 -- ROCCA PIA SITS NEATLY INSIDE A VALLEY IN THE MOUNTAINOUS ABRUzzo region of Italy, due east of Rome. Stone and stucco houses pack the town, which at its widest point is barely seven streets across. It sits alone, its nearest neighbor, the hamlet of Pettorano sul Gizio, three miles to the north. In the early 1900s Rocca Pia was home to 1,200 people and was small enough and isolated enough for residents to know, or at least know of, nearly all other residents. It was here in this quiet, snug, family-centric village that Bernardo Di Sanza was born. -- Di Sanza. . . -- 7 WOODEN SHOES AND AN OATMEAL LUNCH(pp. 46-56) -- 7 WOODEN SHOES AND AN OATMEAL LUNCH(pp. 46-56) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.12 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.12 -- MANUEL RODRIGUEZ WAS A HANDSOME MAN WITH DARK, KIND EYES AND a rugged, square jaw. He had dark hair and a thin mustache curling along his upper lip. Rodriguez was born in northern Spain on January 20, 1889, to Jose and Rosa Rodriguez. He immigrated to the United States in 1910, arriving at Ellis Island on November 11 and most likely passing through Customs in just a few hours, as did the vast majority of immigrants at that time. His wife, Adelayda, pregnant when Manuel left, arrived the following year with the couple's two tiny children: Frank, two, and Armanda,. . . -- 8 MR. EDISON ARRIVES(pp. 57-60) -- 8 MR. EDISON ARRIVES(pp. 57-60) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.13 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.13 -- DONORA'S POPULATION IN 1916 STOOD AT A BIT MORE THAN 10,000, with the factories employing 6,200 men and 300 women. Officials expected that with the operation of the new zinc smelter, plus a new rod mill being built, the population would exceed 20,000 by 1920 and perhaps go as high as 25,000. At the time there simply weren't enough houses to go around. An article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in August 1915 put the issue into stark relief: "The action of the United States Steel Corporation in building a new smelter plan here, transforming in three weeks a field of. . . -- 9 WALLS OF SLAG(pp. 61-70) -- 9 WALLS OF SLAG(pp
- 61-70. -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.14 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.14 -- "TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: BE IT KNOWN THAT I, THOMAS ALVA Edison, a citizen of the United States, residing in Llewellyn Park, Orange, county of Essex, in the State of New Jersey, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Processes of Constructing Concrete Buildings, of which the following is a description." -- Just so begins Edison's patent application for his plan to build single-pour concrete houses. The application goes on to explain how such houses would be built. First, workers would construct a cast-iron "double wall house," which forms a kind of mold into which concrete would be. . . -- PART II WORKING THE MILLS -- 10 TRANSPORTING TREASURES(pp. 73-78) -- 10 TRANSPORTING TREASURES(pp. 73-78) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.15 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.15 -- BORN TWO YEARS SHY OF A NEW CENTURY, HOWARD HART CAME OF AGE in the mid-1920s, a time of immense prosperity for the United States. After the so-called War to End All Wars ceased in 1918, the nation's industrial power turned full-time to the mass production of automobiles, radios, refrigerators, and a host of other consumer goods. Except for a brief depression in 1920-21, unemployment through the decade remained below 6 percent. The nation's wealth doubled during the decade. Liquor was banned by the Eighteenth Amendment, but underground liquor sales and speakeasies flourished. Jazz exploded onto the scene, teens. . . -- 11 O! LITTLE TOWN OF WEBSTER(pp. 79-86) -- 11 O! LITTLE TOWN OF WEBSTER(pp. 79-86) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.16 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.16 -- LIGHT SHOWS FROM MOLTEN SLAG MIGHT HAVE DELIGHTED WEBSTER residents at night, but by day, in the nascent years of the twentieth century, Websterites had much to be delighted by. Perched along a sliver of land across the river from Donora, Webster once boasted a population of about two thousand. From the late 1800s until 1915 anyone looking eastward from West Columbia would have seen a charming town at the base of a hill, a swath of steep farmland rising over well-kept homes. "The sun rose due east above every back door and set facing the front porches," wrote journalist. . . -- 12 ZINC IN THE WIND(pp. 87-92) -- 12 ZINC IN THE WIND(pp. 87-92) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.17 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.17 -- THE CONVIVIAL FEELINGS WOULDN'T LAST. WITH THE ARRIVAL OF THE zinc smelter everything on the Webster side of the bridge changed. Prevailing winds blew whatever poured forth from the zinc smelter chimneys eastward across the river toward Webster, and what poured forth were thick clouds of dust, soot, toxic gases, and particulate matter, tiny bits of solids and liquids suspended in air. Particulate matter and gases emitted from the chimneys included cadmium, sulfur dioxide, zinc, and lead, all highly toxic if inhaled. -- At the height of the smelter's production nearly 30,000 pounds of zinc, 400 pounds of lead, and 332. . . -- 13 IT TAKES A KILLING(pp. 93-103) -- 13 IT TAKES A KILLING(pp. 93-103) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.18 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.18 -- ANGELO GIURA MIGHT HAVE HAD SOME SENSE OF THE DANGERS INHERent in his job, but with his youth, the twenty-year-old probably felt invincible. His supervisors, though, certainly knew the dangers. Yet neither Angelo nor his supervisors paid any heed to those dangers, and, like Hamlet, the young man would pay the ultimate price. -- Born in Italy in 1887, Giura immigrated with his parents, Michaelo and Maria, and settled in southeast Pittsburgh, not far from Homestead Steel Works. When he came of age the young man found work at a wire mill in either Monessen or nearby Allenport. Short and slim. . . -- 14 THE PERSISTENT LEGEND OF YOUNG ANDREW POSEY(pp. 104-112) -- 14 THE PERSISTENT LEGEND OF YOUNG ANDREW POSEY(pp. 104-112) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.19 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.19 -- OF THE THOUSANDS OF ACCIDENTS THAT OCCURRED AT DONORA FACtories over the years, none have captured the imagination of Donorans near and far quite like Andrew Posey's. Posey, an Independence Day baby born in 1897, enlisted as a private in the US Army Ranger program on October 15, 1918. He was assigned to an army training camp in Pittsburgh. -- Germany would sign an armistice to end World War II in less than a month in a railroad dining car in the Forest of Compiègne, France. With no war now to fight, Posey was demobilized and honorably discharged on December 9,. . . -- 15 DEATH ON THE RIVER MEUSE(pp. 113-121) -- 15 DEATH ON THE RIVER MEUSE(pp. 113-121) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.20 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.20 -- FOG ROLLED INTO HUY, ONE OF MANY SMALL TOWNS ALONG THE Meuse River valley in Belgium, on December 1, 1930, a Monday. Autumn and early winter fogs were common in that part of the valley. Steep hills on either side of the river, like the windows in a smoker's car, tended to restrict fog to the basin. Townspeople in Huy (pronounced like the French oui) ambled by Li Bassinia, a fountain in the middle of the town plaza, a favored gathering place. -- The fountain, built in 1406, features statuettes of three saints (Catherine, Domitian, and Mengold), the last Count of. . . -- 16 DECISIONS, DECISIONS(pp. 122-130) -- 16 DECISIONS, DECISIONS(pp. 122-130) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.21 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.21 -- AT THE TIME OF THE MEUSE DISASTER A FARMER NAMED GEORGE GLIWA had a lawsuit in progress against US Steel. Gliwa lived in Lincoln, Pennsylvania, about eight miles north of Webster and directly across the river from the Clairton Works, a large US Steel-owned coke plant. He had for years suffered the ill effects of smoke pouring from the plant's chimneys. Initially Gliwa's suit centered on a US Steel subsidiary, Carnegie Natural Gas, trying at the time to obtain a right-of-way through Gliwa's seventy-one-acre farm. Gliwa refused to allow it. The gas company sued for access. -- Gliwa's attorney, Joseph. . . -- PART III FOG ROLLS IN -- 17 THE DAYS BEFORE(pp. 133-136) -- 17 THE DAYS BEFORE(pp. 133-136) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.22 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.22 -- IT WAS DELIGHTFUL IN DONORA TWO WEEKS BEFORE HALLOWEEN IN 1948. Daytime temperatures hit seventy-one degrees on Saturday, October 16, and nearly eighty degrees on Sunday. Nighttime temperatures plummeted each day, typical of fall in the northeastern United States. Folks would take to layering their clothes for this kind of weather, pleasant during the day and downright chilly at night. -- Much was happening around the world that month. Germans convicted of war crimes were being executed, the latest of them on October 22, when ten Nazi SS officers were hanged in Lansburg, Germany, for having killed "without mercy" Allied fliers. . . -- 18 THE FIRST DAYS(pp. 137-144) -- 18 THE FIRST DAYS(pp. 137-144) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.23 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.23 -- JOURNALIST BILL DAVIDSON WROTE FOR YANK, THE ARMY WEEKLY during World War II and on his return from the war settled in Los Angeles, where he would begin writing for such national magazines as Collier's, McCall's, Good Housekeeping, and Ladies' Home Journal. A talented writer, Davidson was assigned to write a story about the dangers of air pollution in the United States, particularly the effects of sulfur compounds on human health. -- His article for Collier's, a weekly magazine, was called "Our Poisoned Air." It discussed how sulfur had affected people living in the Meuse Valley when tragedy struck there in. . . -- 19 FRIDAY(pp. 145-152) -- 19 FRIDAY(pp. 145-152) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.24 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.24 -- PAUL GARRETT HAYES WAS A YOUNG FAMILY MAN. ROUND, BESPECtacled, and friendly, he taught physics at Donora High School. Hayes kissed his wife, Veronica, goodbye and set off for work at 7:30 Friday morning. Within minutes he became short of breath and nearly choked. -- Hayes suffered from asthma and had been having frequent attacks lately. His doctors had told him a few months before that smoke from the mills was causing the attacks and that if he wanted to survive past his twenties, he should move out of the valley
- Being a man of science, and perhaps a bit stubborn. . . -- 20 HEROES AND VILLAINS(pp. 153-161) -- 20 HEROES AND VILLAINS(pp. 153-161) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.25 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.25 -- "DOC BILL" RONGAUS WAS FINALLY ABLE TO REACH THE DI SANZA HOME at six o'clock Friday evening. By that time Bernardo was in bad shape. -- William Joseph Rongaus had been born to Simplicio and Maria Roncace on April 29, 1914. His parents lived in Amatrice, Italy, a village known worldwide for its eponymous pasta dish, a decadent blend of pork, pecorino, and tomatoes. The family decided to move to the United States and purchased tickets for the steamship Oceania, leaving from Naples bound for New York Harbor. They traveled from Amatrice to Naples with their three children: Frank, not quite. . . -- 21 HALLOWEEN PARADE(pp. 162-167) -- 21 HALLOWEEN PARADE(pp. 162-167) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.26 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.26 -- THE PHONE WAS RINGING WHEN HELEN STACK ENTERED. SHE HAD BEEN eating dinner at a nearby restaurant. She took off her coat and draped it over the back of her chair. Then she answered the phone, added another patient's name to the latest list, and hung up. Suddenly she heard groaning coming from the direction of Roth's office. She found Roth melted into his chair, groaning and coughing, his face brick-red and covered with perspiration. -- "Oh, my goodness, Dr. Roth, are you okay?" she asked. "What can I do?" -- "Nothing, Helen, I'm all right now. I'll get going again in. . . -- 22 THE TOWN REACTS(pp. 168-173) -- 22 THE TOWN REACTS(pp. 168-173) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.27 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.27 -- CHIEF VOLK AND HIS YOUNG ASSISTANT, RUSSELL DAVIS, HAD JUST SAT down for a cup of coffee when the phone rang. It was perhaps 8:30 p.m. or so. The men had just returned to the fire house from the parade, as had several volunteers who marched alongside the trucks. The chief and his assistant said their good-nights to the volunteers and began to rest for a few minutes before heading home. When the phone rang they both looked at it, stunned into silence. -- A fire on such a foggy night? Volk thought. That could be real mean. He dreaded answering. . . -- 23 DEATH BEGINS ITS ASSAULT(pp. 174-179) -- 23 DEATH BEGINS ITS ASSAULT(pp. 174-179) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.28 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.28 -- IT WAS AROUND MIDNIGHT ON FRIDAY WHEN EDWARD ROTH PULLED HIS car to the side of the road and shut the engine off. The fog had become so thick and so dark that driving had become impossible. He grabbed his medical bag and left the car where it was. Then he started walking, feeling his way along the sidewalk. -- It seemed every physician in town was doing the same. American Steel & Wire's Dr. Hannigan was making house calls and sometimes visited the same people another physician had already seen. "We all had practically the same calls," Hannigan remembered, "Some. . . -- 24 "OH, HELEN, MY DAD JUST DIED!"(pp. 180-189) -- 24 "OH, HELEN, MY DAD JUST DIED!"(pp. 180-189) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.29 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.29 -- BERNARDO DI SANZA, THE HAPPY-GO-LUCKY RAILROAD MAN FROM Rocco Pia, Italy, the hale and hearty track foreman who had retired from Donora Southern Railroad not even a year before, continued his battle to breathe. He had barely slept, nodding off and on all night as his wife, Liberata, stayed by his side. -- Early Saturday morning he tried to climb out of bed, but he was so weak that he collapsed on the floor. Liberata must have been terrified to see her otherwise healthy husband lying in a heap, his hands and feet flailing in a vain attempt to arise. She. . . -- 25 GAME DAY(pp. 190-195) -- 25 GAME DAY(pp. 190-195) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.30 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.30 -- IT WAS THREE O'CLOCK, AND STAN SAWA, KEN BARBAO, DON PUGLISI, and the other Donora Dragons players were ready for their highly anticipated matchup against the Monongahela Wildcats. The game was set to start at 3:15 on Legion Field, behind Donora High School, at the top of the hill at Fourth and Waddell. The Wildcats were underdogs, according to every sports journalist in the valley. The last time the Wildcats had beaten the Dragons on their home turf was six years before. In that game Wildcats' left end Dom Mancini nabbed a blocked pass in the final minutes of the. . . -- 26 DONORA GOES TO PRESS(pp. 196-206) -- 26 DONORA GOES TO PRESS(pp. 196-206) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.31 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.31 -- THE TINY HOSPITAL FOR THE STEEL AND ZINC FACTORIES FIRST BEGAN treating ill workers about four o'clock Friday, according to Eileen Loftus, an American Steel & Wire nurse. "A worker staggered in," she said, "gasping. I had him lie down, and gave him oxygen. Then another man came in, and another." Within a few hours every bed and exam table were filled. The sound of wheezing, gasping, and pleading for more oxygen filled the air that night, and again all day Saturday. In total those two days, Loftus and other healthcare providers at the hospital cared for forty-five workers with. . . -- 27 BLESS THE RAINS(pp. 207-215) -- 27 BLESS THE RAINS(pp. 207-215) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.32 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.32 -- THE STAFF AT CHARLEROI-MONESSEN HOSPITAL THAT WEEKEND TREATED patient after patient struggling to breathe, coughing, and complaining of chest pain, headache, and nausea. The hospital's few emergency beds filled up quickly, and so too did the waiting room chairs. Patients were treated and either released or admitted, and as soon as one patient left a bed, another one took their place. The nursing staff rushed to transfer patients out of the emergency room and into a waiting bed on the wards. The empty ward beds soon filled up as well, and physicians began discharging less ill patients so that more. . . -- 28 THE BLAMING GAME(pp. 216-224) -- 28 THE BLAMING GAME(pp. 216-224) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.33 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.33 -- INVESTIGATIONS BEGAN ALMOST IMMEDIATELY, THE MOST PROMINENT and comprehensive of which was an in-depth survey by the US Public Health Service. The agency assigned the study to James G. Townsend, a physician and director of the Public Health Service's Division of Industrial Hygiene. Townsend sent a team to Donora to study the effects of smog on health, a subject that had not received the level of scrutiny it surely deserved. Leonard Scheele, US surgeon general at the time, said that the team's final report showed "with great clarity how little fundamental knowledge exists regarding the possible effects of atmospheric pollution. . . -- 29 FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT(pp. 225-232) -- 29 FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT(pp. 225-232) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.34 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.34 -- AN AUTO-FREIGHT CLERK NAMED LEROY C. LE GWIN READ IN A WILMington, North Carolina, newspaper about the deadly smog that had just occurred and immediately contacted his friend, William Gillies Broadfoot Jr., president of the Wilmington Junior Chamber of Commerce, or Jaycees. Broadfoot had been a heroic World War II fighter pilot, receiving not only the Silver Star and Air Medal but also the Distinguished Flying Cross, British Distinguished Flying Cross, and Chinese Distinguished Flying Cross. -- Le Gwin called Broadfoot with an unusual proposal, to fly ill residents of Donora to Wrightsville Beach, near Wilmington, for rest and recovery. Wrightsville. . . -- EPILOGUE(pp. 233-242) -- EPILOGUE(pp. 233-242) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.35 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.35 -- AS THE 1950S PASSED, FEWER AND FEWER ORDERS CAME IN TO THE STEEL and zinc facilities in Donora. The drop in orders had nothing to do with the smog and everything to do with the age of the equipment and the cost of maintaining it. By 1950 the Zinc Works was forty-five years old and the steel mills and furnaces a full fifty years old, and none of the mills had seen more than a hint of modernization. Newer and far more efficient processes existed by then, particularly in zinc production. US Steel finally said enough and closed the Zinc. . . -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS(pp. 243-246) -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS(pp
- 243-246. -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.36 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.36 -- APPENDIX: COMPLETE VICTIM DATA(pp. 247-252) -- APPENDIX: COMPLETE VICTIM DATA(pp. 247-252) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.37 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.37 -- NOTES(pp. 253-288) -- NOTES(pp. 253-288) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.38 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.38 -- SELECTED REFERENCES(pp. 289-290) -- SELECTED REFERENCES(pp. 289-290) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.39 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.39 -- INDEX(pp. 291-299) -- INDEX(pp. 291-299) -- https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.890689.40 -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890689.40