Welcome

Dating back to Ancient Egypt over 2,000 years ago, air pollution has been handing people free heart and lung disease passes.  The first gases were emitted from wood fires.  No one had really cared, or even noticed that they were slowly lessening their life span, up until 1948, when the Donora Smog happened.  Although it had only killed 20, the Donora Smog had left 7,000 out of the 14,000 residents with heart lung diseases such as COPD, lower respiratory disease, or even lung cancer.  “Hundreds more with respiratory or cardiac conditions were advised to evacuate the city.” (Boissoneault) 

The rest of the country had eventually realized that air pollution was becoming a problem, but everyone thought that it would just eventually stop, but it didn’t.  By the year 1963, some people actually cared enough to pass one of two Clean Air Acts, which allowed the government to research ways to stop air pollution.  They came up empty.  Smogs continued to pop up in major cities such as Chicago, LA, and NYC.  By 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson had enough.  An act was passed that allowed the government/states to limit the amount of emissions emitted.  And in 1970, the second clean air act was passed that created the air quality index, which measures the quality of the air, and will determine if it meets expectations or not.  But the expectations were way too high to be safe.  And up to this date, after two Clean Air Act’s were passed, we still haven’t managed to keep the air pollution-free.