Research SuperBlog: Smog Attack of LA - Eric Brummett

Research Blog: Smog Attack of LA

• Introduction

Air Pollution has been a constant struggle in the United States. Industry and the use of combustion engines to travel have taken their toll on the environment. The problem is even more pressing in Southern California, specifically in the Los Angeles area. In this research project I wanted to explore the effects of smog in the Los Angeles area and how it led to the emissions policies that were developed, the science and research behind the policies, and how these policies affected the automotive industry in the last fifty years. The major event that introduced the idea of needing to control Air pollution was the “Smog Attack of 1943.” This was when the first huge cloud of smog started to cover the sky over Los Angeles. Since World War 2 was at its climax during this time, many believed the cloud of smoke to be a chemical attack from the Axis Powers (Eschner, Kat). After this, Los Angeles County moved in to start up the Los Angeles County Air Pollution Control District in 1947 to start work on controlling the outbreak of smog in the area. These efforts to control the smog included the crackdown on vehicle emissions and fuels, which made up a bulk of the pollution problem in the Los Angeles area. The policies that were created throughout the crackdown of the causes and also benefited from the effects of smog, particularly the effects smog had on people's health. 

The 1998 AHSMOG study shows the data of how people who did not smoke developed lung cancer or asthma as a direct result of long term exposure of ambient ozone particles (Beeson, W.). These health effects came from people of all ages in Southern California. The particles that caused these issues are the ones that had come from vehicles from the early 1940’s and 1950’s. The Automotive industry had to compromise with the strict policies that the research had led to. In the 1950’s, the Automotive industry became a main target of the Los Angeles County Air Pollution Control. It started with exhaust changes to vehicles to limit the amount of particles coming from the tailpipe, then there was the idea to burn propane instead of diesel for vehicles like trucks and buses, and there was the introduction of the rapid transit system to limit the amount of motor vehicles in a dense area (South Coast AQMD). All of these efforts have led to how California directs it’s policies on emissions and pollution, as well as explaining why California is more strict than the Federal EPA.

*Image of citizens of Los Angeles wearing smog masks in 1954.

• Research Process and Sources

When researching the topic of smog in the Los Angeles area, it was important to try and find the sources that pointed toward the history and building on the events of the past to show the results that can be seen in the present. The sources that were used range from Brochures, case studies, a book with vivid imagery describing the smog, and articles that touch on policies and research. Sources like The Southland's War on Smog: Fifty Years of Progress Toward Clean Air AHSMOG study and the Brochure helped to lay out the reasons why battle smog was such a big deal. The case study presented the dangers of ozone particles causing lung cancer in people who had never smoked or been around smoke. The brochure lays out the main timeline of the initial creation of the LA County Pollution Control district to the 50 year later results of the research and policies that had gone into effect. To get a better visual understanding of what it was like to live in Los Angeles during the years of heavy smog, I turned to Smogtown: The lung-burning history of pollution in Los Angeles. This source was also a first person account of someone who was present and lived in these areas of intense smog. It helped to develop a story by describing the scene of smoke covered streets and people with burning red eyes.

The other set of sources really focused on the effects that the strict policies had on the automotive industry. This was an interesting topic that helped show that there was an actual attempt to control the spreading of the particles that created the smog clouds over dense areas like Los Angeles. The sources that I used were ones that directly showed the steps taken to ensure cleaner vehicles and also show the effects of those steps on the automotive industry. Sources like, “California's Vehicle Emissions Fight Continues a 50-Year Struggle,” “How the California Air Resources Board (CARB) Works,” and “History of CARB” helped to establish the struggles that California had with the automotive industry. There was a continuous fight because it would cost automakers more money, they did not have the technology, or there was the worry that two different vehicles would have to be made, one for EPA and one for CARB. The sources also dive into the history of the California Air Resources Board (CARB). CARB is important because this is the agency that made it mandatory for every vehicle to have a catalytic converter in the 1970’s and started the movement toward more electric vehicles starting in the 1990’s. Both sets of sources helped to create a timeline and story that explains how far Pollution Control has come and how it got there.

• Historical Analysis of the Effects of Smog 

Smog has a long and troubling history in the Los Angeles area. The term smog was rooted in the visual appearance of smog looking like a mixture of fog and smoke.The lingering smog cloud could be seen since the early 1900’s. The main causes are industry, transportation, and the geography of the basin area that holds the cloud closer to the ground. The need for control over this menace took off in the 1940’s when the “Smog Attack of 1943” attacked the citizens of Los Angeles. People believed that the smoke cloud was a product of a chemical weapon because it was during the peak of World War 2. There were a large number of people who had migrated to the city of Los Angeles which, according to Jess McNally, was the city built for cars (Kat Eschner). With this notion of being built for cars, Los Angeles became huge in industry with huge smoke stacked factories and a dense population of less than efficient vehicles. The growing population of baby boomers did not help the situation either because this created a rise in urban population. This limited agricultural areas and the rise in industry led to more greenhouse gases being trapped above the city of Los Angeles (BAAQMD). The first step was to create the Los Angeles County Air Pollution Control District in 1947. It was the nation’s first air pollution control program that led to over fifty years of constant research on what causes smog and how to prevent it. It was a top priority to control the pollution because of the effects it was having on the public. The book Smogtown by Chip Jacobs and William Kelly explains how the city was engulfed in the smog cloud through the 1960’s and 70’s. This first hand account from people who lived in this time and area explain that drivers couldn’t see in front of them, their eyes were swollen, and people developed breathing problems. People were terrified and felt like there was no escape from the smog. The panic mentality set in and people started blaming the factories and the factories were blaming rogue factories that they believed were leaking out these particles (W.J. Kelly). With the public and local government worried about the cause and effects of the excessive smog, research toward a solution began.

In 1948 a chemistry professor from the California Institute of Technology named Arie J. Haagen-Smit started research to understand the effects of smog from studying plants that had been damaged. Farmers had started to notice discolored plant leaves that were not common in other parts of the country, even parts that had problems with air pollution. Haagen-Smit ended up finding the first breakthrough in the battle against smog. He found that the air in the Los Angeles area was highly oxidized which made it different from the air pollution in other parts of the country, he found that this was caused by the over exposure of ozone mixed with automotive exhaust fumes. With this discovery and further research through the 1950’s, scientists found that the amounts of burning garbage and the evaporating gas from refinery tanks were holding back progress (AQMD, Brochure). Scientists like Dr. Arnold O. Beckman, during the 1950’s, found it important to take immediate action against incinerators. Beckman owned Beckman Instruments which was a company that specialized in developing instruments to monitor air pollution.Beckman played a key role in communicating directly with members of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and in finding uses for equipment used to measure air quality from the Liston-Becker Company. Beckman and the Chamber of Commerce mostly spoke about regulations on the banning of burning dumps (Beckman Collection). These regulations spread to the bay area as well as being implemented in Los Angeles. Along with attacking the source of smog, The Beckman Committee recommended creating a rapid transit system. This would help alleviate the amount of people on the road commuting from their suburban housing to their jobs in the city. Along with the creation of rapid transit, there was a major shift in cleaning up the cars and the gasoline they run on.

It became no secret that cars were one of the main sources of smog. Cars emit particles in the air that are harmful to the environment and to people. With the dense and growing population in Los Angeles, there were more and more cars operating and causing greater pollution. The issue that prolonged a big evolution early on in how automobiles operate was because of the issue of cost and technology that was available at the time (Barringer, Felicity). In 1959 however, the California Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Board was founded. They started work fixing the problem of blowby gases that were being sent out into the air from the engine’s crankcase which is on the intake side of an engine. In 1963 the Positive Crankcase Ventilation Valve was introduced by General Motors researchers. The researchers found that the manifold vacuum in the engine is constantly changing, there need to be a control valve to limit blowby. This device allowed unburned fuel to be recycled back in the manifold and reburned. There were two versions of this system, closed and open. The closed PCV system was developed in 1968 and was more effective in eliminating blow by and later allowed cars to idle cleaner (Auto Repair Help). In the 1970’s, scientists took a look at the exhaust system and found room for improvement to limit the amount of particles coming from the exhaust side of the engine. The California Air Resources Board or CARB was introduced in 1967 and was tasked with aggressively attacking the issue of air pollution. CARB had the full support of the Clean Air Act and paved the way for catalytic converters to be on vehicles in the 1970’s, check engine lights, and looked ahead into the future of zero emission vehicles. The use of catalytic converters help to eliminate the emissions coming from the exhaust system of vehicles, and the check engine light warned of bad O2 sensors that were in place to measure how much emission where being let out. Years of research went into these technologies to better them for more efficentence. In the 1990’s and on to the present, CARB and the EPA started to push zero emissions vehicles that ran on a cleaner energy source like electricity. This idea was worked through the early 2000’s to the California’s Advanced Clean cars Program in 2012, and brought about ZEVs and hybrid models of cars that ran on gas and electricity (History of CARB).

• Imagery Analysis

The two pictures below are historical images from the mid to late 1940’s. As shown, the smog in the air made it hard to even see a short distance in front of you. The first Picture shows a view from a building balcony that gives a visual of how bad the pollution was and gives context to why many believed it to be a chemical attack. The second picture is interesting because the main subject of interest is wearing a gas mask. This was probably something from the Flu pandemic that plagued the world in 1918. It may seem a little extreme if the viewer did not know how bad the air quality really was. If you look closely, you'll see that the woman to the left is wiping their eyes with handkerchiefs and one of them looks as though she was coughing. These images are important to see and relate to the one from just last year and see how the only difference is location and the people.

*Photo From a Balcony overlooking a main street in LA

*Photo of a man in a gas mask, and women showing effects of the smog.

This image was important to tie in the historical progress with what it really looks like in today's world. While there is research and graphs that have shown a decrease in exposure to smog from the 1940’s and through to today, there are still days like this. This picture was taken September 11th, 2020 near a photo op point for the Hollywood Sign. It has a striking resemblance to the two photos above from the 1940’s. This is one of those moments that are a product of an over exposure of ozone that happens, according to the map and chart below, about 100 or so days out of the year in the LA area.

The PCV valve was created to eliminate blowby which sent out more particles in the air and led to more pollution. Most of the time pollution was thought to just come from the exhaust side of a combustion engine, however GM researchers found that it was also coming from the intake side. As seen in the image, the PCV allows for the intake system to be closed and an unburned fuel from the combustion chamber is recycled back to be reburned in the new rotation.

This image represents all of California. As represented, the darker blue means more days with over exposure of ozone. The time line goes from 1990 to 2018. It shows how coming out of SoCal and going up north is more clean air and in some places up north, there is not even enough pollution to be relevant. This is because in Southern California, in particular in the LA area, there are more metro areas and a denser population. The geographic characteristics also play a major role because of the way pollutants in the air get trapped pretty low and close to the ground. In this area, according to the mapping above, it stays in the dark/light blue for most of the 28 years. There has been some progress that can be tracked through the early 2000’s and starting in 2005, this area stayed in the light blue, which is a high of 149 days of over exposure, up to present time. There has not been less than 100 days of over exposure in the LA area in the past 28 years even with the progress that has been made.

This is one of the many letters and memos that were shared between Arnold O. Beckman, John F. Bishop, and The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. This one in particular is from 1953 and talks about the instruments such as pH meters and infrared spectrophotometers being used to measure and monitor air pollution. The conversation also shifts into developing more instruments that are similar that are designed specifically for this task.

Even Though the emission restriction and research pertaining to smog in LA have been going on since the early 1950’s it is only in the past 30 years that we see a difference. The progressive of getting cleaner air in the LA area took off in 1970 with the Clean Air Act. This graph is a better representation of the timeline of the amount of days per year of over exposure of the Ozone. As shown, the peak was in the 1980’s, in this time the catalytic converter was just starting to make its way into every vehicle. At this time there was also the push of more fuel efficient vehicles. California has also moved, during this time, to targeting the greenhouse gases from industry to combat global warming. Over the last 3 decades represented by this graph, there have been 20% fewer asthma cases in California from smog exposure.

• Conclusion

The battle of Air Pollution still rages on even with the advancement and development of technology and policies against pollution. Air pollution is an invisible and sometimes, as in Los Angeles, a visible enemy that affects people's health and the environment. Researchers and government officials in California and the rest of the country have worked to limit emissions from industry and transportation. The issue is the reliance that society has on industry and vehicles to live everyday life. These are important in creating goods, jobs, and simply getting around more efficiently. Organizations like the EPA, CARB, and South Coast AQMD were founded to help regulate and control the efforts used to fight against smog and over a 50 year period, progression has been made. There are less days over ozone exposure in SoCal as of 2018, greenhouse gases emitted from factories and industry have been greatly limited, and vehicles have received major changes making them more environmentally friendly. There is still more to be done and in looking at the history of this battle, it is clear that it will take more time. Technology and the cost of advances to battle air pollution will always affect this timeline, but if people learn how to do their part in using things like rapid transit, cleaner vehicles, and supporting organizations then that timeline can shrink and a cleaner world could be a reality.

Bibliography

Barringer, Felicity. “California's Vehicle Emissions Fight Continues a 50-Year Struggle.” Stanford Earth. Accessed February 18, 2021. https://earth.stanford.edu/news/californias-vehicle-emissions-fight-continues-50-year-struggle#gs.twk2lh. 

George, Patrick E. “How the California Air Resources Board (CARB) Works.” HowStuffWorks. HowStuffWorks, September 12, 2008. https://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/fuel-economy/carb2.htm. 

Yee, Krista. “‘A Period of Consequences’': Global Warming Legislation, Cooperative Federalism, and the Fight Between the EPA and the State of California” 32, no. 1 (2008): 190–92. https://doi.org/10.31228/osf.io/y8ejh. 

“History of CARB.” California Air Resources Board . Accessed February 18, 2021. https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/about/history. 

Grace, Francie. “Smog Alert.” CBS News. CBS Interactive, June 1, 2002. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/smog-alert/. 

Beeson, W. (1998). Long-term Concentrations of Ambient Air Pollutants and Incident Lung Cancer in California Adults: Results from the The Southland's War on Smog: Fifty Years of Progress Toward Clean Air (through May 1997) AHSMOG  Study. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Loma Linda University, 813-822.

Jacobs, C., & Kelly, W. J. (2015). Smogtown: The lung-burning history of pollution in Los Angeles. New York, NY: Overlook Press.

South Coast AQMD. (1997). The Southland's War on Smog: Fifty Years of Progress Toward Clean Air (through May 1997) [Brochure]. Author. Retrieved from http://www.aqmd.gov/home/research/publications/50-years-of-progress#to

Eschner, Kat. “This 1943 ‘Hellish Cloud’ Was the Most Vivid Warning of LA's Smog Problems to Come.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 26 July 2017, www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1943-hellish-cloud-was-most-vivid-warning-las-smog-problems-come-180964119/. 

“South Coast AQMD.” About, www.aqmd.gov/nav/about.

“Digital Collections.” Beckman Historical Collection - Science History Institute Digital Collections, digital.sciencehistory.org/collections/wh246s128?f%5Bcreator_facet%5D%5B%5D=Beckman%2C%2BArnold%2BO.&f%5Bsubject_facet%5D%5B%5D=Smog. 

Says:, Sacha Arlt. “PCV Valve Related Symptoms and Problems.” Auto Repair Help, 24 Oct. 2020, autorepairhelp.us/pcv-valve-related-symptoms-and-problems/.