Gasping for Air: The Donora Smog Disaster

Posted by on Sep 18, 2023 in | Comments Off on Gasping for Air: The Donora Smog Disaster   They couldn’t breathe. During five days in autumn of 1948, the industrial town of Donora, Pennsylvania, became an environmental and public health nightmare when what the national media called a “killer smog” took the lives of nearly two dozen people who died struggling to breathe. “We have had the worst fog in the last four days in [the] history of Donora. About 18 persons have died...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Sep 18, 2023 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter Seventy-five years ago, unbridled industrial enterprise took its toll on the mill town of Donora in southwestern Pennsylvania when a low-lying smog of chemical toxins from the local steel and zinc plants enveloped the community. The Donora Smog of October 1948 claimed the lives of 20 people during the five-day crisis, later about 50 others, and caused long-term respiratory problems for nearly...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Guide to the State Historical Markers of Pennsylvania By George R. Beyer Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2000 (456 pages, paper, $15.95) It is generally well known that the Commonwealth’s state historical marker program is among the most popular public history initiatives ever mounted by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC). The program, also one of the...
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The 1948 Donora Smog

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on The 1948 Donora Smog As early as 1881, the cities of Chicago, Illinois, and Cincinnati, Ohio, had passed laws in attempts to control several types of pollution. Air pollution, however, remained an uncontrolled, unrecognized health hazard until tragedies in the twentieth century demonstrated its lethal effects. In 1930, smog covering the Meuse River Valley in Belgium sent sixty people to their graves, and in 1952...
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The Value of Pennsylvania History

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Value of Pennsylvania History George W. Bush won the presidential election of 2000 because the fifty states cast more electoral votes for him, even though more people actually voted for his opponent, Albert A. Gore Jr. The election reminded Americans about a curious institution called the Electoral College, and an equally peculiar system known as federalism in which each state conducts elections according to distinct laws...
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Letters

Posted by on Nov 24, 2013 in | Comments Off on Letters Worthy of Note The Summer 2006 edition of Pennsylvania Heritage was warmly received in no small measure due to the well-written articles about Edwin Austin Abbey [“Edwin Austin Abbey, A Capital Artist” by Nancy Mendes] and Joseph Leidy [“Joseph Leidy, A Natural Observer” by Tom Huntington]. The article on the now vanished silk indus- try in Pennsylvania was also worthy of...
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