1966 New York City smog

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1966 New York City smog
A black-and-white, panoramic view of New York City as seen from a great height. A
vast number of buildings and skyscrapers can be seen. A hazy, smoky gas overlays
the entire city like a blanket, with a fairly clear skyline only in the far
distance at the horizon. Near the closest buildings, the smog appears thin and
wispy. The smog appears thicker and thicker around buildings that are farther away
from the photographer's position, until shorter buildings near the horizon are
almost entirely shrouded and impossible to see under a thick layer of smog. Near
the horizon, the clustered tops of tall skyscrapers emerge from within the smog.
On November 25, 1966, the front page of The New York Times featured this image,
taken the morning before, of the view looking south from the Empire State Building.
[1] Roy Popkin of the EPA said the "surrealistic" image made Lower Manhattan look
like a science-fiction "Cloud City".[2]
Date November 2326, 1966
Location Acute smog in New York City; lesser smog throughout the New York
metropolitan area
Coordinates 40.713N 74.006WCoordinates: 40.713N 74.006W
Cause Heat inversion over East Coast[3]
Casualties
There are several estimates for the number of casualties caused by the smog:

168 (estimate from 1967 medical study)[4]

The 1966 New York City smog was an air-pollution event, with damaging levels of
carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, smoke, and haze. Smog covered the city from
November 23 to 26, which was that year's Thanksgiving holiday weekend. It was the
third major smog in New York City, and followed events of similar scale in 1953 and
1963.

On November 23, a large mass of stagnant air over the East Coast trapped pollutants
in the city's air. For three days, New York City had high levels of carbon
monoxide, sulfur dioxide, smoke, and haze. Smaller pockets of air pollution
pervaded the New York metropolitan area. On November 25, regional leaders announced
a "first-stage alert". During the alert, leaders of local and state governments
asked residents and industry to take voluntary steps to minimize emissions. Health
officials advised people with respiratory or heart conditions to stay indoors. The
city shut off garbage incinerators, requiring massive hauling of garbage to
landfills. A cold front dispersed the smog on November 26 and the alert ended.

In the months that followed, scientists and doctors studied the smog's impact. It
became clear that the smog had been a major environmental disaster with severe
public health effects. One study estimated that 10 percent of the city's population
suffered adverse health effects, such as stinging eyes, coughing, and respiratory
distress. City health officials initially maintained that the smog had not caused
any deaths. Later, a statistical analysis found that 168 people had likely died
because of the smog.

The smog catalyzed greater national awareness of air pollution as a serious health
problem and political issue. New York City updated its local laws on air pollution
control. Prompted by the smog, President Lyndon B. Johnson and members of Congress
worked to pass federal legislation regulating air pollution in the United States,
culminating in the 1967 Air Quality Act and the 1970 Clean Air Act. The 1966 smog
is a milestone that has been compared with other pollution events, including the
health effects of pollution from the September 11 attacks and pollution in China.

Contents [hide]
1 Background
1.1 Smog in general and types of smog
1.2 Smog in the United States and New York City before 1966
1.3 City air monitoring
1.4 Warnings
2 Timeline of smog event
2.1 November 1923: stagnant air traps pollutants
2.2 November 24: Thanksgiving Day
2.3 November 25: first-stage alert declared
2.4 November 26: cold front arrives
3 Impact
3.1 Initial estimates of health effects and casualties
3.2 Subsequent estimates of casualties
3.3 Urban life and smog
4 Political reaction
4.1 National attention
4.2 Municipal response
4.3 States' responses
4.4 Federal response
5 Legacy
6 See also
7 Notes
8 References
8.1 Citations
8.2 Sources
Background[edit]
Smog in general and types of smog[edit]
Main article: Smog
A view of London obscured by heavy smoke
Great Smog of London, 1952
Los Angeles, shrouded in haze
Smog over Los Angeles, 1973
The word "smog" (a portmanteau of "smoke" and "fog") is used to describe several
forms of air pollution commonly found in urban and industrialized areas.[5][6]
There are several ways to define and categorize types of smog, with some sources
defining two main types of smog: smoky "London"-style smog and hazy "Los Angeles"-
style smog.[7]

London smog describes particulate matter (for example sulfur dioxide, smoke, and
soot) from stationary industrial sources (typically coal combustion from industrial
chimneys) mixing with naturally occurring fog.[8][9]
Los Angeles smog, or photochemical smog, results from the combustion of petroleum
(and other petrochemicals) and emission of exhaust gas, usually by motor vehicles
and petrochemical plants.[10][11] More precisely, photochemical smog is the product
of "secondary" pollutants (ozone, oxidants) that form when hydrocarbons (or
volatile organic compounds), carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and other chemicals
react together in sunlight.[5] Photochemical smog arrived in modern cities in the
1940s and 1950s with the popularization of motor vehicles and development of new
power plants.[5]
Neither London smog nor Los Angeles smog is exclusive to the city that lends its
name, and both can be commonly found in the same region.[7] At the time of the 1966
smog and in the two decades prior, air pollution in New York City was caused by
both stationary sources such as industrial coal-burning[9][12] and mobile sources
such as motor vehicles,[3][13] and as such, combined the characteristics of both
London smog and Los Angeles smog.

Although smog is a chronic condition, unfavorable weather conditions and excessive

pollutants can cause intense concentrations of smog that can cause acute illness
and death; because of their unusual visibility and lethality, these intense smog
events have often been publicized in the media[5][14][15] and are typically
described as disasters or, more specifically, environmental disasters.[3][16] An
acute "smog event" may also be called simply "a smog", a smog "episode", or a
"killer smog" (if it caused, or had the potential to cause, deaths).

Smog in the United States and New York City before 1966[edit]
Further information: Air pollution in the United States
Many buildings and skyscrapers seen from a great height, surrounded by smog. Unlike
the previous image above, no horizon can be seen as the entire sky is blotted out
by the smog. If the position of the prior photo was "above" a blanket of smog, this
photo is completely underneath and within it.
The Chrysler Building as seen from the Empire State Building on November 20, 1953,
during the six-day smog that caused at least 200 deaths.[17]
Even before the 1966 smog episode in New York City, it was known by scientists,
city officials, and the general public that the cityand most major American
citieshad serious air-pollution problems.[6][18][19][20] According to scientific
studies from the period, more than 60 metropolitan areas had "extremely serious air
pollution problems" and "probably no American city of more than [50,000]
inhabitants enjoys clean air the year round".[6] The air "over much of the eastern
half of the country [was] chronically polluted," and the cities with the most
intense air pollution were New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and
Philadelphia.[6]

New York City's air pollution was reportedly the worst of any American city.[19]
Although the "persistently glaring" photochemical smog of Los Angeles was more
visible, more "infamous,"[14] and received a greater degree of public attention,
[20] New York City had more total emissions and many more emissions proportional to
its area.[19] Despite its higher emissions, New York City's landscape and weather
normally prevented smog from concentrating at high levels,[19] meaning the smog was
mostly invisible most of the time.[20] Unlike Los Angeles, which is surrounded by
mountains that tend to trap airborne pollutants, New York City's open topography
and favorable wind conditions usually dispersed pollutants before they could form
concentrated smog.[19] If 1960s New York City had surroundings and a climate like
those of Los Angeles, pollutants would not have escaped as easily and smog would
have made the city uninhabitable.[19]

The smog event of 1966 was preceded by two other major smog episodes in New York
City: one in November 1953, and one in JanuaryFebruary 1963.[a] Using statistical
analysis that compares the number of deaths during periods of smog with the number
of deaths during the same time in other years, medical scientists led by Leonard
Greenburg were able to determine that excess deaths[b] occurred during those smogs,
from which it can be inferred that the smog caused or contributed to those deaths.
[23] An estimated 220240 deaths were caused by the six-day 1953 smog,[17][24][25]
and an estimated 300405 deaths were caused by the two-week 1963 smog.[17][21]
Other episodes of smog had occurred in the city prior to 1966, but were not
accompanied by statistically significant excess deaths.[21]

City air monitoring[edit]

In 1953, the city opened a laboratory to monitor pollution that would become its
Department of Air Pollution Control.[26] The department quantified pollution with
an air quality index, a single number based on combined measurements of sulfur
dioxide, carbon monoxide, and haze or smoke levels in the air.[1] The city
laboratory recorded the presence of those three pollutants, as measured by amount
(concentration in parts-per-million, or ppm) and duration (time).[1] The data for
those three pollutants were combined into a single number using a formula developed
by department co-founder Moe Mordecai Braverman.[27] The index average was 12, with
an "emergency" level if the index was higher than 50 for a 24-hour period.[1] The
average, 12, was determined from data collected between 1957 and 1964, and the
"emergency" level of 50 was announced in 1964.[27] The index system used by the
city in 1966 is not in use anywhere today and was unique to the city even at the
time; the 1966 smog itself prompted scientists to reexamine and improve the city's
methodology for recording air-pollutant levels.[28]

Using the index, the city developed an air-pollution alert system with three stages
of alert, matching increasingly severe levels of pollution with corresponding
counteractions.[c] Braverman, who developed the alert system, admitted during the
1966 smog that the system was arbitrary:

No one knew what to do next [after determining the average level of smog in the
city], so I just said, "If it's four times as high, that's an emergency."[27]

Critics also pointed out that the index could allow the city to reach lethally high
levels of carbon monoxide without any alert if the levels of other pollutants
remained low.[27] However, the department had to contend with the fact that no
universally accepted standards for recording smog existed at that time, and many of
the flaws existed for lack of a better alternative.[27] During the 1966 smog, one
of the former commissioners said he would have readily adopted a better system, if
one existed.[27]

A brick building gables, archways, an octagonal corner tower and a four-faced

clock.
In 1966 the city had only a single air quality measurement station, at the Harlem
Courthouse (pictured in 2009).[29]
At the time of the 1966 smog, air quality measurements were recorded from only a
single station, the Harlem Courthouse building on East 121st Street,[29] run by
Braverman and his staff of 15.[26] Taking measurements from a single station meant
that the index reflected conditions in that small area, but served as a poor,
unrepresentative gauge of overall air quality across the entire city.[27][29] The
Interstate Sanitation Commission, a regional agency run by New York, New Jersey,
and Connecticut and headquartered at Columbus Circle, also relied on the Harlem
Courthouse laboratory. Formed in 1936, the advisory agency was authorized in 1962
by New York and New Jersey to oversee air pollution issues.[30]

Warnings[edit]
Dr. Helmut F. Landsberg, a climate scientist with the federal Weather Bureau,
predicted in 1963 that the Northeastern and Great Lakes regions could anticipate a
major smog event every three years due to the confluence of weather events and
trends like growing population, industrialization, and increased emissions from
cars and central heating.[31] In early 1966, Dr. Walter Orr Robertsdirector of the
National Center for Atmospheric Researchwarned of the imminent threat of a smog
event with the potential to kill as many as 10,000 people.[32] Roberts identified
Los Angeles or New York City as the cities most vulnerable to a large-scale lethal
smog in the United States, and London, Hamburg, or Santiago as other the most
vulnerable internationally.[33] Asked if "many" American cities were vulnerable to
a disaster smog event, Roberts replied, "Yes. I have been worried that we would
wake up some morning to an unusual meteorological situation that prevented the air
from circulating and that we might find thousands of people dead as the result of
the air they were forced to breathe in that smog situation."[34]

The mayor's office established a 10-member task force headed by Norman Cousins
(known as the editor of the weekly magazine Saturday Review) to study the problem
of air pollution.[19] The task force published a 102-page report in May 1966,
finding that the city had the most polluted air of any major city in the United
States, with a wider range and greater total tonnage of pollutants than Los
Angeles.[19] The task force criticized the city for lax enforcement of pollution
laws, even naming the city itself the biggest violator, with municipal garbage
incinerators "operat[ing] in almost constant violation" of its own laws.[19] The
report warned "all the ingredients now exist for an air-pollution disaster of major
proportions"[19] and that the city "could become a gas chamber" in the wrong
weather conditions.[25]

A July 1966 report by the New York Academy of Medicine Committee on Public Health
cautioned that New York City's air-pollution problem made it susceptible to acute
and lethal episodes and recommended a reduction of air pollution.[35] Further, the
report concluded that scientists had likely not identified the full range of
harmful pollutants or health effects caused by air pollution.[36]

Timeline of smog event[edit]

November 1923: stagnant air traps pollutants[edit]
In November 1966, New York City was experiencing an unseasonably warm "Indian
summer".[3] A cold front from Canada brought clean air to the city on November 19,
but the cold front was held in place by pressure from the higher atmosphere.[12] An
anticyclonic temperature inversion[37]in other words, a warm, mostly stationary
air mass located atop a cooler air massformed over the East Coast on November 20.
[38]

Unlike atmospheric convectionthe ordinary process of lower, warm air

risinginversions leave cooler air suspended below warm air, preventing the lower
air from rising and trapping airborne pollutants that would ordinarily disperse in
the atmosphere.[39] Such weather events are common, but they are usually followed
by a strong cold front that brings an influx of clean air and disperses pollutants
before they have enough time to become highly concentrated; in this case, a cold
front approaching west through southern Canada was delayed.[40] When explained in
less formal terms, the process of an inversion causing a smog event has been
compared to a lid that holds in pollutants[39] or a balloon that fills with
pollutants.[12] In general, smog events occur not because of a sudden increase in a
region's output of pollution, but rather because weather conditions like stagnant
air prevent the dispersal of pollutants that were already present.[41]

The inversion prevented air pollutants from rising, thereby trapping them within
the city.[37] The smog event itself started on Wednesday November 23, coinciding
with the beginning of the long Thanksgiving weekend.[2] The material sources of the
smog were particulates and chemicals from factories, chimneys, and vehicles.[3]
Sulfur dioxide levels rose.[37] Smoke shade, a measure of visibility interference
in the atmosphere, was two to three times higher than usual.[37]

Refer to caption.
These weather maps show winds at 18,000 feet from November 2126, 1966. A mass of
warm air spreading east and south above the East Coast created the inversion that
trapped pollutants near the ground.[42]
November 24: Thanksgiving Day[edit]
We were flying at about two thousand feet, through a curiously greasy-looking
and pervasive haze. The ground could just be made out belowcars, roads, houses,
all dim but visible.
Then we began to climb. In less than a minute the ground had vanished. Cars,
roads, houses, the very earth itself had been blotted out. We were circling in
bright sunlight, above an apparently limitless bank of opaque, polluted air. The
smog extended to the horizon in every direction. At a distance, the slanting rays
of the sun gave it a coppery, rather handsome appearance. Nearer at hand it merely
looked yellow and ugly, like nothing so much as a vast and unappetizing sea of
chicken soup.

William Wise, describing his view from an airplane delayed in landing at John F.
Kennedy International Airport. Wise was returning from London, where he had been
researching the 1952 Great Smog of London.[43]
The city chose not to declare a smog alert on Thanksgiving Day, but The New York
Times later reported that city officials had been "on the verge" of calling an
alert.[1] Austin Heller, the city's commissioner of air pollution control, said he
nearly declared a first-stage alert[c] between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. on November 24.
[d] Heller said the index had reached a high of 60.610 points higher than the
"emergency" markbetween 8 and 9 p.m., and the 60.6 reading was possibly the
highest in the city's history.[1] After a nighttime lull, Heller cautioned, the
smog would likely spike again in the morning.[1]

The unusually heavy smog was evident to the crowd of one million onlookers at the
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.[2] Tabloids and newspapers that ordinarily ran
front-page stories about the parade instead carried stories about the smog.[2]
Health officials cautioned those with chronic lung diseases to stay indoors and
advised patients that symptoms of pollution-related illness usually lagged 24 hours
after exposure.[1]

That day, the city closed all 11 of its municipal garbage incinerators.[1][44]
Energy companies Consolidated Edison (called Con Ed for short) and Long Island
Lighting Company were asked to burn natural gas rather than fuel oil to minimize
the release of sulfur dioxide;[1] both companies voluntarily cut back emissions,
with Con Ed reducing its emissions by 50 percent.[45] The city told 18 inspectors
"to forget their turkey dinners and start looking for dirty air," and they issued
an "unusually high" number of citations for emissions violations, including two for
Con Ed plants.[45] Representative William Fitts Ryan of Manhattan sent a telegram
to Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare John W. Gardner to request an
emergency meeting with New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, New Jersey Governor
Richard J. Hughes, and other regional leaders.[1]

November 25: first-stage alert declared[edit]

By Friday November 25, a first-stage alert[c] for the New York metropolitan area,
including parts of New Jersey and Connecticut, was declared through newspaper,
radio, and television announcements.[45] Governors Rockefeller and Heller attended
a press conference with Deputy Mayor Robert Price standing in for Mayor Lindsay,
who was on vacation in Bermuda.[45][e] The announcement "was believed to be the
first appeal ever made to New York's citizens in connection with a smog problem".
[2] Conrad Simon, who acted as a liaison between the scientific and political
communities during the crisis, later said "We came close to closing the city
down."[2]

Pollution was not as high in New Jersey or Connecticut as in New York, but it was
still significant. New Jersey reported its worst-ever smog. Elizabeth, New Jersey
had smog at half the levels of New York City. A Connecticut health official
reported air pollution four times higher than average; Greenwich, Connecticut was
minimally impacted. The nearby New York counties of Nassau, Suffolk, and
Westchester reported very little smog.[45][47] Although not part of the area
covered by the alert, unusually high smog was reported as far as Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania and Boston, Massachusetts,[f] whose mayor issued a similar health
warning.[48]

The alert was declared upon the advice of the Interstate Sanitation Commission.
Members of the commission had been monitoring the smog situation in shifts for
three days, nonstop. Thomas R. Glenn Jr., the commission's director and chief
engineer, recommended the alert at 11:25 a.m. after seeing instruments in New York
and New Jersey that showed carbon monoxide greater than 10 ppm (parts-per-million)
and smoke greater than 7.5 ppm, both for more than four consecutive hours.[30]

In New York, the city asked commuters to avoid driving unless necessary, and
apartment buildings to stop incinerating their residents' garbage and turn heating
down to 60 F (15 C).[45] New Jersey and Connecticut asked their residents not to
travel, and to use less power and heat.[45] Although it was a workday, traffic was
light in New York City.[45] A check on 303 buildings of the New York City Housing
Authority later found near-total cooperation with the city's requests. Private
residences were believed to have a high rate of voluntary cooperation with the
city's plea to cut energy consumption.[29]

The weather forecast called for the heat inversion to end that day, followed by a
cold wind that would disperse the smog.[45] Nevertheless, Heller said that if the
wind did not come, a first-stage alert would likely remain in effect and it might
become necessary to declare a second-stage alert[c] if conditions worsened.[45]

November 26: cold front arrives[edit]

New Yorkers went to work yesterday morning in acrid, sour-tasting air that was
almost dead calm. Many had headaches that were not the product, they thought, of
holiday over-eating. Their throats scratched. But no deaths were attributed to the
smog.

Homer Bigart, "Smog Emergency Called for City," front-page article for the November
26, 1966 edition of The New York Times[45]
Rain came in the night. The cold front that would blow away the smog was forecasted
to arrive between 5 a.m. and 9 a.m.[29] Shortly after 9 a.m. the wind arrived,
moving mostly from the northeast between 610 miles per hour and bringing cooler
temperatures in the 50s F (1015 C).[29] Glenn at the Interstate Sanitation
Commission sent a message advising the alert to end at 9:40 a.m., based on weather
and air readings.[30] Shortly after noon, Governor Rockefeller declared the end of
the alert; New Jersey and Connecticut also ended their alerts that day.[29]

Health effects from the smog were downplayed in most early reports. Some hospitals
reported increased admissions of patients with asthma.[45] An official at the city
Department of Health noted that some hospitals were receiving fewer asthma
patients, and attributed the reported increases to ordinary random fluctuations.
[45] The official told The New York Times that "[i]n not one [hospital] is a
pattern emerging which would suggest we are dealing with an important health hazard
as of this moment."[45] By this time, the inability to incinerate garbage had
generated a large amount of excess waste. Hundreds of sanitation workers worked
overtime to transport garbage to landfills in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten
Island,[45] with the bulk going to Fresh Kills in Staten Island.[44]

Impact[edit]
The atmosphere of New York was bombarded with more man-made contaminants than any
other big city in the countryalmost two pounds of soot and noxious gases for every
man, woman, and child. So great is the burden of pollution that were it not for the
prevailing wind, New York City might have gone the way of Sodom and Gomorrah.

John C. Esposito, Vanishing Air (1970)[49]

Initial estimates of health effects and casualties[edit]
It was not initially clear to the medical community how many casualties and
illnesses had been caused by the smogor indeed, whether the smog had caused any
casualties at all. The population of the area affected by the smog has been
estimated at 16 million.[50] A November 26 story by Jane Brody in the New York
Times cautioned that it would likely take "a month or more" before investigators
had enough data to assess whether the smog had caused any deaths.[51] Three days
later, after studying admissions to municipal hospitals for cardiac and respiratory
complications, the city commissioner of hospitals Joseph V. Terenzio told the press
"I can report almost with certainty that there was no detectable immediate effect
on morbidity and mortality because of the smog. ... It now seems unlikely that
final statistical analysis will reveal any significant impact on the health of New
York City's population."[52] Early reports of injuries focused not on respiratory
damage, but on car or boating accidents caused by poor visibility.[3]

Nonfatal health effects were difficult to measure in the smog's immediate

aftermath.[51] Some of the health effects were themselves delayed; for example,
most of the serious effects on the elderly population would only manifest days
after initial exposure.[51] A study on the smog's nonfatal health effects was
published in December 1966. The study, conducted by a nonprofit health research
group, found that 10 percent of the city's population suffered some negative health
effects from the smog, including symptoms like stinging eyes, coughing, wheezing,
the coughing-up of phlegm, or difficulty breathing.[53] The director of the
research group said anything serious enough to adversely affect as much as 10
percent of the population, like the smog had, indicated the existence of a serious
public health problem.[53]

Subsequent estimates of casualties[edit]

The earliest report of casualties came in a special message by President Lyndon B.
Johnson sent to Congress on January 30, 1967. In the message, the president said 80
people had died in the smog.[54] Johnson did not cite a source for that claimed
estimate of deaths, and there is no known source concluding that 80 people died,
other than those citing Johnson.[g]

Two major medical studies have analyzed the extent of casualties from the smog.
Leonard Greenburgthe same medical researcher who had previously published findings
on the death count of the 1953 and 1963 smogspublished a paper in October 1967
showing that the previous year's smog had likely killed 168 people.[4] Greenburg
showed that there were 24 deaths in excess[b] of how many would normally be
expected at that time of year every day, over a period of seven daysusing a period
four days longer than the smog itself had lasted because of the delay between smog
exposure and resultant health effects.[4] Greenburg said that his analysis could
not account for damage during the smog that would remain latent and continue to
cause disease and death for years.[4] The results of Greenburg's paper were
reported by The New York Times.[4]

The smog was compared to the 1948 smog in Donora, Pennsylvania and the Great Smog
of London of 1952, both of which lasted five days.[55] The London smog's death toll
of 4,000 was far higher than Donora, but the smog in Donora was far more severe; at
the time of its smog, Donora was a small industrial town with a population of only
13,000, and its population was proportionally hit much harder with 20 deaths and
smog-related illnesses among 43 percent of the population.[55] Pollution experts
estimated that if a smog as strong as the Donora smog had occurred in the much more
populous New York City, the death toll could have been as high as 11,000 with four
million ill.[55]

Urban life and smog[edit]

See also: urban decay, white flight, environmental justice, and environmental
racism
Circumstantial factors helped to offset the smog's potential strength and health
damage.[25][56] The event began over the long Thanksgiving weekend, not the
workweek, meaning that many factories were closed and far fewer people were in
traffic than normally would be.[56] The warm weather meant the demand for central
heating was also lower than usual.[56] On November 25, the high of 64 F (18 C)
broke the previous record high for that date, leading the reporter Homer Bigart to
describe the apartment-heating restrictions as "no problem."[45] Because of these
factors, pollutionand the death tollwere likely lower than they could have been
otherwise.[56]

An industrial plant, with a mess of household trash items strewn haphazardly on the
ground in front of it.
The incinerator plant at Gravesend Bay in Brooklyn, pictured in 1973. The 1966 smog
event demonstrated the ways in which disparate problems of urban life, such as
waste management and air pollution, are interconnected.
The smog brought into focus the complexity and interdependency of environmental
problems and other issues of urban life.[44] Attempts by city government to react
to the smog had unintended negative side effects of their own; as Mayor Lindsay
reflected in his 1969 book The City, "[e]very time you shut down an incinerator,
you increase the amount of garbage on city streets."[44] Efforts to address a given
environmental problem can cause undesired side effects, sometimes unforeseeable,
which are often related to a city's limited resources.[44]

Environmental harms in general are linked to urban decay and social inequality.
After the 1966 smog, the task of eliminating or reducing air pollution became an
essential part of the goal to make "the city attractive again to the middle class
and acceptable to all its residents."[44] Such harmsbut especially those that
create obvious and unpleasant effects, as smog doeswere among the factors that,
historically, motivated and exacerbated white flight[h] from American cities,
including New York City, in the mid-20th century.[44] The mass migration of
affluent residents, whether individually motivated by unpleasant environmental
factors like smog in whole or in part, drained the city's tax base and resulted in
a loss of human resources for the city's economy.[44] Residents who remained in the
city often had no choice whether to stay or to leave because they lacked the
resources that would enable them to move.[44] Those residents then saw the burdens
of pollutionincluding the direct effects of pollution itself, indirect effects of
city reactions to pollution (for example, uncollected garbage in the streets), and
other problems stemming from lack of municipal resources after white flightas
"emblems of larger governmental neglect and social inequality".[44]

Political reaction[edit]
National attention[edit]
The smog is commonly cited as one of the most-visible and most-discussed
environmental disasters of the 1960s in the United States, alongside the 1969 Santa
Barbara oil spill and the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire.[57][58][59] National public
awareness of the smog and its health effects spurred the nascent environmental
movement in the United States and galvanized support for legislation to regulate
air pollution.[60][61] Vernon McKenzie, chief of the air pollution division of the
federal Public Health Service, called the smog "a warning of what can happenand
will happenwith increasing frequency and in wider areas unless something is done
to prevent it."[52] In the 1968 book Killer Smog, William Wise warned that the 1966
smog and the 1952 London smog represented a vulnerability to air pollution
disasters among American cities:

Perhaps, as in Great Britain, change will begin to come only after a large-scale
tragedy. The conditions are favorable for one in any of a dozen of the nation's
most populous cities. A mass of still air drifting slowly eastward, an intense
thermal inversion, and then five, six, seven days of increasingly poisonous smog.
The air will look bronze, almost copper-colored, as it did during New York's 1966
Thanksgiving smog. ... From every appearance, a similar tragedy is now being
prepared in Americaand there is very little time left in which to prevent it.[62]

At the time of the smog event, only half of the urban population of the United
States lived with local protections on air quality; the smog event catalyzed the
call for federal regulation on the issue.[61] Spencer R. Weart of the American
Institute of Physics said the American public "did not take the problem [of air
pollution] seriously" until the 1966 smog.[63] According to Weart, an important
factor driving awareness of the smog was its location, as events in New York
"always had a disproportionate influence on the media headquartered there."[63]

Municipal response[edit]
Refer to caption.
John Lindsay (pictured in April 1966) was the mayor of New York City during the
1966 smog.
A morning skyline of New York City, with docks and the ocean visible at the bottom
and progressively thicker haze into the distance. Only the outlines of far
buildings can be seen, with details like windows or architectural features
impossible to distinguish.
Smog in May 1973. By 1972 New York City had cut levels of sulfur dioxide and
particulates by half from their peak.[56]
Before the 1966 smog, the city government had been slow to act to regulate air
pollution.[64] Despite general awareness of the health and environmental impacts of
smog, other problems took priority: as The New York Times reported, issues like
"housing, crime, education and keeping the city 'cool'" were at the forefront of
city government concerns.[64] But the 1966 smog impelled a swift response by the
city government,[65][66] who now felt pressure to respond "in the aftermath of
disaster."[64] Lindsay, then a liberal Rockefeller Republican, had run as a
supporter of stronger air pollution control in his 1965 mayoral campaign, and the
1966 smog reinforced Lindsay's position on the issue.[65]

City Council member Robert A. Low, a Manhattan Democrat and chairman of the city
subcommittee on air pollution, criticized Lindsay for failing to enforce an air-
pollution bill that had been passed in May.[67] The bill, authored by Low, would
update city incinerators and require apartment buildings to replace their
incinerators with other garbage disposal methods.[67] Low accused Lindsay's
administration of "dragging its feet" on the problem of air pollution,[67] which
Lindsay called a "political attack."[52]

The mayor's office prepared a report in the aftermath of the smog, singling out the
coal-burning Consolidated Edison company, city buses, and apartment building
incinerators as significant contributors to air pollution.[65] The report noted
that the change in weather that dispersed the smog "spared the city an unspeakable
tragedy," and that if New York City had stagnant smog at the high levels commonly
found in Los Angeles, "everyone in the city would have long since perished from the
poisons in the air."[68] Consolidated Edison began using a fuel with lower sulfur
content, and by June 1969 the city had reduced the level of sulfur dioxide in the
air by 28 percent.[64]

In December 1966, the New York City Administrative Code section on pollutant levels
in the air was strengthened[56] by a bill that was later described as the "toughest
air pollution control bill in the country" at that time.[66] Lindsay announced a
plan to install 36 new stations for the Department of Air Pollution Control to
measure air pollution levels throughout the cityan upgrade from the sole station
in the Harlem Courthouse building. The stations would send data to a central
computer using telemetry to create a profile of the city atmosphere.[29][30] Five
of those stations would also send data to the Interstate Sanitation Commission.[30]
The city purchased a computer system and equipment from the Packard Bell Company
for $181,000 ($2.4 million in 2016 dollars).[69]

In November 1968, the city opened 38 monitoring stations, 10 outfitted with

computer equipment. The 10 computerized stations were designed to send data every
hour to the central computer, while the other 28 operated manually as backup.[28]
The old index system used during the 1966 smog, which produced a single number from
multiple measurements, was abandoned as simplistic and unhelpful.[28] The new index
system was similar in that it used weather forecasts and measurements of pollutants
in the air and had three progressive stages of severity ("alert," "warning," and
"emergency") requiring stronger actions by city, industry, and citizens.[70]

The city's actions mitigated air pollution and reduced the likelihood of a major
smog event on the same scale.[64] In contrast to dire warnings from the mayor's
air-pollution task force in its May 1966 report, a city official said in 1969 "[w]e
probably have the possibility of a health catastrophe under control now."[64] The
city declared minor smog alerts in 1967 and 1970;[71][72] conversely, a four-day
inversion similar to the Thanksgiving weather of 1966 occurred in September 1969,
but it passed without incidentneither smog nor deaths resulted.[56] Norman
Cousins, chairman of the mayor's task force, credited the regulations enacted since
the 1966 smog for the prevention of a comparable September 1969 event. Cousins
wrote in a message to Lindsay:

New York City's air is cleaner and more breathable today than it was in 1966. ...
It is important to ask what would have happened on those days [in September 1969]
if the pollution levels had continued to worsen at the same rate of deterioration
that occurred from 1964 to 1966. The answer is that there could have been a
substantial number of casualties. The fact that an episode did not occur attests to
the capability of the City's programs to protect its air resources.[56]

After the passage of strict new state and federal air regulations, the city passed
its updated Air Pollution Control Code in 1971, designed in part to address
concerns that nitrogen oxides and unburned hydrocarbons had been left
insufficiently controlled by the previous changes.[56] By 1972, New York City had
cut levels of sulfur dioxide and particulates by half from their peak.[56]
According to an article published by the EPA Journal in 1986, those improvements at
the city level were "the legacy of concern that emerged after the 1966 Thanksgiving
Day smog disaster."[56]

States' responses[edit]
Refer to caption.
Following the 1966 smog, air-pollution control became a major policy objective of
both Nelson Rockefeller (left), the Republican Governor of New York, and Lyndon B.
Johnson, the Democratic President.
Prior to 1966, air-pollution control had largely been the responsibility of states
and political subdivisions of states like counties and municipalities (cities and
towns).[73][74] The federal government played little role in air-pollution control,
and to the extent that it did, its actions supported the efforts of states and
local governments.[75] For example, federal law provided resources like research,
training, grants to improve state and local programs, and a conference procedure to
convene agencies and polluters under the guidance of the Department of Health,
Education and Welfare.[75] Direct regulationssuch as, for example, setting
emissions standardswere left to states.[75]

The governors of New York (Rockefeller), New Jersey (Hughes), Delaware (Charles L.
Terry Jr.), and Pennsylvania (Raymond P. Shafer) met in December 1966 to address
air pollution in their region.[76] Each governor pledged to enforce their state's
pollution abatement laws and to prevent their own state from becoming a "pollution
haven" with lax regulations to attract industry.[76]

At the same meeting, the governors also discussed the possibility of new tax
incentives to motivate industry to reduce pollution and the creation of a new
interstate compact[i] to set industry standards, which would require adoption by
all member states and approval by Congress.[76] Those four states were already
members of the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), an interstate agency that
controls water pollution in the Delaware River.[4] The proposed air-pollution
compact was modeled after the DRBC and would function similarly, setting minimum
air standards across states and enabling enforcement actions against polluters.[77]
New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut adopted the proposed Mid-Atlantic States Air
Pollution Control Compact[78] with the possibility for Delaware and Pennsylvania to
join in the future.[79] Its approval by Congress became a policy goal of
Rockefeller's failed primary bid for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination.
[80] The compact was never approved by Congress and thus never took effect.[79]

After the 1966 smog, "the consequences of state inaction were apparent to the naked
eye," public outcry intensified, and the demand for federal intervention increased.
[81] New Jersey passed several new air-pollution laws in 1967.[78] Nevertheless,
traffic and drifting polluted air from New Jersey remained a major contributor to
New York City's pollution problem.[64] Edward Tellerthe physicist known for his
role in developing the hydrogen bomb and an advisor to Mayor Lindsay on pollution
and energy issuesadvocated for New York state to adopt stricter sulfur fuel
standards than the city.[82] A leader of the advocacy group Citizens for Cleaner
Air criticized the local and state governments at a state public hearing, calling
the city's enforcement "in a state of collapse" and, saying the city acting alone
"cannot or will not enforce any standard or rule," demanded that the state
government increase its role.[64]

Perhaps the most notable critic of New York's inaction was Robert F. Kennedy.[83]
On a 1967 tour of pollution sources, Kennedythen a New York Senator and soon to
embark on his 1968 presidential campaigncriticized the city, the states of New
York and New Jersey, industry, and the federal government for their failures to
adequately address the problem.[83] Kennedy warned, "[w]e are just as close to an
air-pollution disaster as we were last Thanksgiving."[83] In Kennedy's view, the
solution would have to come from the federal government, as state and local
agencies lacked the ability or oversight for the task.[83]

Federal response[edit]
Air pollution control, already a priority of President Lyndon B. Johnson's
administration,[j] became a greater concern after the smog. By early 1967, his
statements on air pollution became more rhetorically urgent.[86] In January 1967,
Johnson sent a message to Congress entitled "Protecting Our National Heritage," the
first section of which was entitled "The Pollution of Our Air" and focused on the
problems posed by air pollution.[54] The message was prompted by wide public
discussion of the problem following the 1966 smog.[87] Johnson cited the
experiences of specific American cities and towns in the message, and highlighted
the 1966 smog at length:

Two months ago, a mass of heavily polluted airfilled with poisons from
incinerators, industrial furnaces, power plants, car, bus and truck enginessettled
down upon the sixteen million people of Greater New York.

For four days, anyone going out on the streets inhaled chemical compounds that
threatened his health. Those who remained inside had little protection from the
noxious gases that passed freely through cooling and heating systems.

An estimated 80 persons died.[g] Thousands of men and women already suffering from
respiratory diseases lived out the four days in fear and pain.

Finally, the winds came, freeing the mass of air from the weather-trap that had
held it so dangerously. The immediate crisis was ended. New Yorkers began to
breathe "ordinary" air again.

"Ordinary" air in New York, as in most large cities, is filled with tons of
pollutants: carbon monoxide from gasoline, diesel and jet engines, sulfur oxides
from factories, apartment houses, and power plants; nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons
and a broad variety of other compounds. These poisons are not so dramatically
dangerous most days of the year, as they were last Thanksgiving in New York. But
steadily, insidiously, they damage virtually everything that exists.[54]

Refer to caption.
President Johnson signing the Air Quality Act of 1967. The law, a series of
amendments to the 1963 Clean Air Act, was enacted in response to the 1966 smog.
Johnson called for a bill regulating toxins in the air and increasing funding for
pollution programs.[54][68] Edmund Muskie, a Senator from Maine and political
environmentalist, praised Johnson's words, pledged to hold hearings on the
proposals,[89] and would soon sponsor the Johnson administration's bill, which
became the Air Quality Act.[90] Muskie also co-sponsored bills in 1967 for research
on non-polluting automobiles using either electric or fuel cell technology.[91]
While discussing the research bills on the Senate floor, Muskie said "the serious
air pollution situation in New York City [in November of 1966] dramatically
illustrated what our cities may be facing in the future if an alternative to the
[internal] combustion engine is not developed."[91]

Congressional interest and public pressure for greater air pollution regulation had
existed since the signing of the 1963 Clean Air Act, the first federal legislation
on the issue, but further action had been opposed by members of Congress who
believed responsibility for air regulation properly lay with the states, not the
federal government.[92] Partly in response to the added public pressure spurred by
the smog event, Congress passed and Johnson signed the 1967 Air Quality Act, which
amended the 1963 Clean Air Act to provide for study of air quality and control
methods.[93][94]

The Air Quality Act was a significant advancement in the realm of air-pollution
regulation, but one that was ultimately ineffective. In Train v. Natural Resources
Defense Counsel, a 1975 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice
William Rehnquist summarized the law's effect as follows:

The focus shifted somewhat in the Air Quality Act of 1967, 81 Stat. 485. It
reiterated the premise of the earlier Clean Air Act 'that the prevention and
control of air pollution at its source is the primary responsibility of States and
local governments.' Its provisions, however, increased the federal role in the
prevention of air pollution, by according federal authorities certain powers of
supervision and enforcement. But the States generally retained wide latitude to
determine both the air quality standards which they would meet and the period of
time in which they would do so.

The response of the State to these manifestations of increasing congressional

concern with air pollution was disappointing. Even by 1970, state planning and
implementation under the Air Quality Act of 1967 had made little progress.[95]

Among contemporaneous critics, John C. Espositoan environmentalist and affiliate

of Ralph Naderwrote the 1970 book Vanishing Air to accuse Muskie of watering down
the bill and adding needless complications to satisfy industry.[96] A 2011
encyclopedia of environmental law judged that the act "was a failure but it was the
first step in federal air pollution control."[94] Calls for greater air pollution
regulation in this era culminated with the passage under President Richard Nixon of
the 1970 Clean Air Act, which supplanted the Air Quality Act and has been described
as the most significant environmental legislation in American history.[92] The 1970
Clean Air Act significantly increased the role of the federal government and, for
the first time, imposed air quality requirements on states.[97]

Legacy[edit]
Refer to caption.
A plume of smoke rising from lower Manhattan after the September 11 attacks, seen
from space. Cumulative air pollution events like the 1966 smog contrast with the
sudden pollution that resulted from the September 11 attacks.
The most widely recognized legacy of the 1966 smog was the political reaction to
it, which galvanized the nascent environmental movement in the United States and
prompted demand for sweeping air-pollution control laws.[57][58][59][60][61] The
smog has been remembered for various purposes by scientists, historians,
journalists, writers, artists, activists, and political commentators.

The full range of negative health effects arising from the September 11 attacks
came to light in the years following the attacks. The 1966 smog serves, along with
the earlier major New York City smog events in 1953 and 1963, as a precedent used
for comparison with the air effects caused by the collapse of the World Trade
Center. The 1966 smog and other historical smog events differ from the September 11
pollution in significant ways that limit their usefulness as a point of comparison.
Unlike the air impact of the September 11 attacks, the New York City smog events
were chronic and cumulative rather than acute, sudden, and short-lasting, and prior
smog events had thousands of small sources rather than a single culpable source.
The absence of prior events similar to the September 11 attacks left "a hole in the
medical library," and presented medical experts with a challenge in the absence of
"hard knowledge about the health consequences of intense brief pollution."[24]

Other major air pollution, particularly in China, has been compared to the 1966
smog. Elizabeth M. Lynch, a New York City legal scholar, said that images of
visible air pollution in Beijing from 2012 were "gross" but not "that much
different from pictures of New York City in the 1950s and 1960s", specifically
referring to the 1952, 1962,[a] and 1966 smog events.[98] Lynch wrote that the
Chinese government's increased transparency on the issue was an encouraging sign
that pollution in China could be regulated and abated just as it had in the United
States.[98] Similar comparisons between the 1966 smog and Chinese pollution in late
2012 appeared in Business Insider and Slate.[99][100] USA Today cited the 1966 smog
after China issued its first "red alert" air quality warning in December 2015;[101]
the same month, an article in The Huffington Post used the 1966 smog to argue that
China could follow the United States' model to regulate pollution.[102]

The smog event has been referenced in pop culture. Smog figures into the plot of
the 2012 Mad Men episode "Dark Shadows", which is set in New York City during the
same Thanksgiving weekend in 1966.[103] A reviewer in The A.V. Club interpreted the
writers' use of the smog as a symbolic representation of the character Betty, who
spends the episode "longing to enter [Don Draper's] apartment and tear some shit
up""hover[ing]" and "waiting to poison it from within".[104] The New York City-
based indie pop band Vampire Weekend used a photograph of the smog over the city
skyline, taken by Neal Boenzi and originally published in The New York Times, for
the cover of their 2013 album Modern Vampires of the City.[105]

Following the 2016 election of Donald Trump to the presidency, his administration's
environmental proposalsincluding steep budget cuts to the EPA and
deregulationprompted several reflections on the environmental condition of the
United States prior to the creation of the EPA. The New York Times,[106] Vice
Media's tech-news site Motherboard,[107] public radio station WNYC,[108] real
estate news site 6sqft,[109] and environmental advocacy group Natural Resources
Defense Council (NRDC)[110] connected Trump's declared policies to the risk of
returning to a more polluted environment, with each publication evoking the 1966
smog as an example of the potential dangers of defunding and deregulation. David
Hawkins, an attorney for NRDC, recalled, "I was a student at Columbia Law School
during the 1966 episode. It was frightening, but while that is the best-known
event, heavy pollution was an everyday fact of life those days."[110]