The Donora Death Fog

HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel

History, Education, Society & Culture

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

October 26, 1948. A mysterious fog descends upon the valley town of Donora, Pennsylvania. Most of its residents work at the local steel mill and are used to murky air. But there’s something different about this miasma of acrid vapors. People begin to cough convulsively; some have trouble breathing. Residents crowd into local doctors’ offices, some arriving at the doorstep gasping for breath. They wonder, what is happening to us? The fog lifts from the valley 5 days later, leaving 20 people dead. What caused the Donora Death Fog? And how did it lead to the creation of the Clean Air Act?

Special thanks to our guests: Dr. Devra Davis, author of When Smoke Ran Like Water Tales Of Environmental Deception And The Battle Against Pollution; and Brian Charlton, from the Donora Historical Society and Smog Museum. We’d also like to thank Mark Pawelec and David Lonich.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The History Channel, original podcast.
0:04.0	History this week, October 26, 1948.
0:11.0	I'm Sally Helm.
0:14.0	A foggy morning isn't unusual in Dinora.
0:18.0	It's a steel town on the banks of the Mananga Heller River,
0:21.0	tucked into a spot where the waters make a graceful, horseshoe-shaped curve.
0:27.0	Most of the men in town work for local industries, especially Dinora,
0:31.0	Zinc Works, and American steel and wire.
0:34.0	The mills are at the heart of the town.
0:37.0	At Christmas, the kids had down there to pick up a gift, an apple, an orange,
0:41.0	a dime, and a box of animal crackers.
0:46.0	On this day in late October, the waters of the Mananga Heller are still warm.
0:52.0	The air is chilly, and the morning fog doesn't burn off at 10 a.m.
0:59.0	It sticks around, casting a pall over this little community in Western Pennsylvania,
1:05.0	20 miles south of Pittsburgh.
1:08.0	There's always been something a little weird about the air in Dinora.
1:13.0	Everybody knows it.
1:15.0	The sky changes color depending on what's happening at the mills.
1:18.0	Sometimes it's yellowish, or reddish brown, or black.
1:23.0	People in Dinora have to scrub their walls and repaint their houses pretty often
1:27.0	because they get covered in grime.
1:29.0	Near the mills, flowers refuse to grow.
	...

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