SMOGTOWN

“Remember those great 1950s horror movies, when some superpowerful creature menaced a city while the citizens panicked, law enforcement officials bumbled, politicians pontificated, and plucky scientists worked at a fever pitch to find something, anything, to kill the monster? That’s pretty much the feel of this remarkably entertaining and informative chronicle of the birth and—so far—inexorable evolution of smog. On July 8, 1943, smog attacked Los Angeles without warning (well, not much warning). People didn’t know what to make of this gray mist that blanketed the city, and when it didn’t go away (or went away and then came back), the citizenry began to react in strange ways: there were rumors, for example, that this smelly cloud was some sort of chemical attack by the Japanese—less than a year after Pearl Harbor, this claim didn’t sound so silly. By 1947, when it looked like smog was here to stay, the governor of California created the country’s first smog agency. The following year, a documentary about smog was released in theaters, animated by some guy named Walt Disney, and a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter was writing investigative pieces about the stinky mist. Later, smog helped launch Ralph Nader’s crusading career, and today it’s a central theme in the environmentalism movement. This book is just amazing, a gripping story well told, with the requisite plucky scientists (including Arie Haagen-Smit, a Dutch biochemist who was “the Elvis of his field”), hapless politicians, and a nebulous biochemical villain who just will not be stopped.” – David Pitt

Smog in the can - for real

It wasn’t just urban myth. It was a real product intended to make the inventors a little scratch while broadcasting, with cynical camp, that a famously upbeat people now regarded air pollution as part of the regular weather cycle. There’s some neat trivia about products like this and the gestalt behind them in our book. And there’s always the Internet if it’s a must-have for your souveneir case. Take that greenhouse gas.

You may not respect Oxycorp. You may believe this mini-documentary feels more like propaganda than unbiased reportage. You can take issue with the spelling mistakes, or their inclusion of U.S. nuclear tests in what is a message about air pollution. Those are fair knocks. Whatever Oxycorp.’s ideology, the harrowing facts in this videograhy ring audaciously true.

Smog is a silent killer, a sneaky assasin, and it undercuts the public health of millions across the world every day. It confuses schoolkids about the true color of the sky, and stalks the innocent and the unware alike, particularly if they already suffer from a preexisting illness involving their heart, lungs or immune system. Angelenos — the ones raised here under those heavy ozone and particulate-matter skies a generation or two ago — were in a sense the planet’s first guinea pigs, their anatomies analyzed, their behavior charted. Los Angeles’ pathos and know-how in grappling with the beast were supposed to instruct other big industrial cities how to sidestep the air pollution abyss as they developed and motorized and built their cities and permitted their factories.

Evidently, sometime between Southern California’s first victories against air pollution, namely forcing Detroit and the oil industry to make serious changes to their messy products, and today the message was lost. In the age — some might say hysteria, others apathy — of global warming, when was the last time you heard environmentalists or politicians condemn the civic airshed, maybe say we can’t afford Los Angeles? Our bet is that you haven’t. And that you should’ve.