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Terrorist attack kills nearly 3,000 people on this day in 2001 in New York city and spews a plume of ash and dust into the air. Officials tell New Yorkers not to worry about the toxic aftermath. “I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C., that their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink,” said EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman a few days after the attacks. EPA scientists like Cate Jenkins  objected to that assessment but were silenced or fired. Jenkins was eventually fired but then reinstated after after a whistleblower investigation.  By 2004 it was clear that a 911 was in fact an environmental disaster as well as a terrorist attack, and in the years since, survivors of the attack have experienced severe physical and mental health issues.

Smog Siege hits LA in early October, 1954. Unlike previous smog episodes typical of London or industrial cities like Donora, Pa., the Los Angeles smog is produced by automobiles. In the 1954 photo here, members of the Optimists Club are seen wearing gas masks, which was a familiar and semi-serious response to the smog episodes. A sign hanging in the back says “Why wait until 1955? We might not even be alive.” A more serious response was the creation of the California The Bureau of Air Sanitation in 1955 which became the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in 1967. Other photos and information are here.  Los Angeles continues to have the nation’s worst smog, two decades into the 21st century, according to the American Lung Association’s annual “State of the Air” 2019 report.

Air pollution not linked to disease according to a report released by the American Cancer Society on this day in 1964. Scientists conducting the study said air pollution in California was not causing a statistically significant rise in disease. The four year study of 65,000 non-smokers failed to establish a link between disease and air pollution. The report’s authors “refused to say outright that smog was not a public health menace,” the New York Times reported. But it may be, the reports authors said, that it would take 20 or 30 years for effects to be noticed.

Automotive exhaust gasses will be extensively studied at the University of Pittsburgh, the American Chemical Society announces today in 1928. Others involved are from the National Safety Council and the US Bureau of Mines. The major subject of the study will be carbon monoxide, the society announces. Leaded gasoline, which had been highly controversial only a few years before, is not mentioned. The ACS statement says: “The information at hand regarding the amount of carbon monoxide to which the public is exposed and the probable effects of such amounts leads the committee to believe that in general no alarming condition exists in the thoroughfares. In closed or confined places, the danger is greater.”

Acropolis eroding Air pollution has caused more damage to the Acropolis of Athens, Greece than had been suffered in four previous centuries, the United Nations said on this day in 1975.

Smoke Abatement Week declared by New York CIty Mayor William O’Dwyer from Oct. 23 to Oct 29, 1949 in connection with the national Smoke Prevention Association of America. Concern was apparently sparked by the Donora PA disaster of October 30-31, 1948 and subsequent protests.

Paying for Clean Air The public is willing to pay more for electricity if it means cleaner air, the science adviser to President Richard Nixon told a Federal Power Commission hearing on this day in 1969.