The Donora Killer Smog (1948)
This Day in Esoteric Political History
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2023
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s October 29th. This day in 1948, a heavy, pollutant-laden fog is sitting over the Pennsylvania town of Donora. Over the course of five days, dozens of people would die and half the town’s population would get sick.
Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss why the town of Donora was so vulnerable to the US Steel plant’s pollution, and how the company fought back against regulation over the course of decades.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia. |
| 0:07.0 | My name is Jody Avergare. |
| 0:09.0 | This day, October 29th, 1948, the Dunura Smog kills about 20 people and causes respiratory |
| 0:20.0 | problems for almost half the population of the 14,000 people living in the factory town of |
| 0:25.6 | Denora, Pennsylvania. |
| 0:27.4 | The city about 24 miles southwest of Pittsburgh. |
| 0:30.8 | So what was this smog? Well, as name implies the smog is a mix of pollution and |
| 0:35.6 | atmospheric conditions. It's warmer air trapping colder air near the surface of the town |
| 0:40.2 | and this mixing with pollutants from the local steel mill a thick yellow |
| 0:45.1 | acrid smog hangs over denora for five days before the weather finally shifts and |
| 0:50.3 | the pollutants dissipated but in that that time, the damage was done. |
| 0:54.0 | Deaths, lingering health effects, |
| 0:56.0 | and also, very interestingly, |
| 0:58.0 | maybe a little wake-up call of sorts for the community. |
| 1:00.0 | This is a story not just about industrial pollution, but also one that shows that calls for environmental justice as we call it now came a lot earlier than maybe we realized or at least I realized in this country. |
| 1:12.0 | So let's talk about it all here as always |
| 1:14.2 | Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. |
| 1:18.6 | Hello Jody. Hey there. I want to talk about this plant and the after effects of this smog and concerns about this plant |
| 1:28.0 | going back for a long time, but let's actually just go to that day in this town because some of the the scenes and the picture of what it means to be in |
| 1:36.3 | this town of Dunora in this stretch with this smoggers is kind of stunning. |
| 1:40.9 | Well you started with that description of smog itself, right? This mixture of smoke and |
| 1:44.6 | fog that on the morning of October 27th is so thick that like people are still going |
... |
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