Book Review: Smogtown – The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles

If you think the air is bad in Los Angeles right now, you probably didn’t live there for much of the past century. When the thick, view-obscuring gray haze first appeared in the city on July 26th, 1943, nobody knew quite what to think of it. Was some factory suddenly spewing tons of pollution in to the air? Was it some kind of chemical attack? Citizens of this Southern California city didn’t yet realize the cost of their own modernized lifestyle, wherein practically every single resident owned their own vehicle.

“Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles” by Chip Jacobs and William Kelly tracks the smog invasion of LA from the first moment it arrived through the many efforts to combat it.  This might not sound too exciting – especially for people who aren’t hardcore environmentalists interested in every detail of our nation’s struggle with pollution – but you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that Smogtown is thoroughly entertaining from start to finish.

It’s a dramatic story, playing out like it was written for the screen, with clear protagonists and villains – and humor peppered throughout. While Smogtown does an excellent job of providing the hard facts about how the pollution got so bad, the weakness of the government in controlling it and the difficulty of convincing Los Angelenos to sacrifice any part of their lifestyle to make it go away – it’s also a gripping tale that will keep you eagerly turning the pages. What with the terrified citizens crashing their cars in panic at the appearance of the smog and bewildered, ineffectual government officials bumbling about, it’s almost like Godzilla, but with pollution as “the beast”.

Of course, we all know how this story ends. Air pollution is still a major concern in Los Angeles, and despite knowing that the automobile is the source, LA is still crawling with cars and lacking a decent public transit system. But don’t let that stop you from giving this lively story a read. It’s got sex, plenty of Hollywood glamour, scandal, and murder – but never falters in its brilliant coverage of an incredibly important environmental issue.

Check out the Smogtown blog at lasmogtown.com for lots more info, including the latest news about efforts to fight pollution in LA.

Link [Smogtown]

Beijing is Even Smoggy on Google Maps

There’s no hiding this kind of nasty funk in the air.  Beijing authorities might try to tell everyone it’s ‘mist’, but take a gander at the dirty lookin’ air hovering above the city on Google Maps.  Yuck.  How’d you like to breathe that in every day? Olympic athletes only have to deal with it during the games; Chinese citizens have to deal with it for life.

Link [Google Maps]

Dirty, Polluted Air in Beijing Right Before the Olympics

The smog levels in Beijing right now are 5 times the safety limit. Chinese officials have thrown their hands up, saying they can’t do anything about it. Pollution tests by the Sunday Times confirmed that the levels are far above the standards set by the World Health Organization.

From the Times Online:

With just five weeks to go before the start of the Beijing Games, tests conducted outside the national stadium — known as the Bird’s Nest — and at Tiananmen Square, the starting point of the marathon, showed the air is thick with particulate pollution.

Even the Chinese government’s official air pollution index — which monitors a range of pollutants, including carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide — is running at double the level recommended by the WHO.

Du Shaozhong, deputy director of Beijing’s Environmental Protection Bureau, said: “We made a commitment to ensure air quality for the Olympic Games . . . as for whether we have reached the goal, that will be examined after the event.”

This has led many Olympic athletes to worry about whether they’ll be able to perform at their best. Haile Gebrselassie, the world’s leading long distance runner, has already pulled out of the games due to his athsma. The British team is training in Macau on the southern coast until the last minute to avoid the pollution as long as possible before the games start.

We’re calling it – the Olympics in Beijing are going to be a messy clusterfuck.

Link [Times Online]
Photo credit: Flickr user borkur.net