1960: The smog war begins

Aug 12th, 2010 at 8am   |   23 comments

If the 50th anniversary of the nation’s first automobile smog bill hasn’t been overly memorialized, well, we’re not surprised. Between emissions regulations, safety oversight, insurance premiums and OPEC, the law enacted in April of 1960 was the first, and maybe most important, factor in ushering the almost 20 years of low-performance Seventies and Eighties.

With the privilege of hindsight, however, we can be more charitable. Detroit was ludicrously slow to adapt, but the imports were quicker (although Germany had some impressively emissions emasculated cars well through the Eighties), and ultimately, emissions regulations helped drive innovation and competition, until 50 years later, we’re finally starting to see alternatives to pure gas power (again).

Okay, so that’s not a particularly impressive timeline, but it’s an excuse to look back at the events leading up to 1960, when car exhaust first became regulated.

The word smog itself is credited to the Weather Bureau, which coined the term for mixed smoke and fog in 1914. (It was widely met with derision. As Kokomo Times asked, “But why end there? Let’s call a mixture of snow and mud ‘smud.’ A mixture of snow and soot ‘snoot,’ and a mixture of snow and hail ‘snail.’ Thus we might have a weather forecast: ‘Snail today, turning to snoot tonight; tomorrow smoggy with smud’.”)

In 1928, Pittsburgh launched a War on Smog, in reaction to foul coal smoke that literally blackened the daytime skies. The Depression didn’t help their cause, as people burned ever-cheaper coal, and 10 years later there were still days when headlamps were mandatory, if ineffectual against the apocalyptic blanket of filth. By then, it was a source of perverse pride – “prosperity smog,” they called it, and other cities were positively envious, even as the health and safety detriment became obvious.

Compared to factory and furnace effluent, then, automobile pollution was beneath notice, and Los Angeles, San Francisco and St. Louis joined Pittsburgh in campaigns to control smokestack emissions. In response to ever increasing industrial pollution, primarily in L.A., California passed the California Air Pollution Control District Act of 1947, which gave counties the authority to address air pollution on a local level. L.A. promptly formed the nation’s first country agency dedicated to air pollution, the Los Angeles County Air Pollution Control District (APCD).

The car didn’t come into it until 1949, when medical resources freed up after the war started to look into tailpipe emissions. That summer, smog was the main topic of the AMA convention in Atlantic City, and L.A. County Smog Control Director Dr. Louis C. McCabe discovered a hitherto unexplained concentration of organic peroxides in L.A.’s increasingly dingy air – among the sources he identified were incomplete combustion from automobile engines – and the die was cast.

In 1954, the Automobile Manufacturers Association formed a committee to look into the issue, and that summer an early catalytic converter, or “antismog muffler,” was being tested independently by L.A. Smog Director Gordon P. Larson, but it was much too late. L.A.’s two million cars were racking up 50 million miles a day.

It came to a head in October of 1954, when for 18 consecutive days, Los Angeles was enveloped in the worst smog it had ever experienced. It was even worse again in November, a literally zero-visibility cloud extending 20 miles inland, leading to looting, deaths and, on November 27, more than 1,500 accidents. A populace irritated both literally and figuratively besieged Governor Goodwin J. Knight with pleas to do something about the situation.

The legislature would get around to it eventually, but the ’47 law gave counties the power to do something themselves, and San Francisco and neighboring communities were the first, passing the Bay Area Air Pollution Control Law, which created the Bay Area Air Pollution Control District (BAAPCD) in 1955.

Then it got ugly. In July 1958, the L.A. County Grand Jury issued a written opinion lambasting the APCD and automakers, which together had expended “millions for glitter and hardly one cent for defense of the health and protection of the American citizens against smog.”

Spurred into action, the U.S. Public Health Service organized a national conference on air pollution in Washington, D.C., in November. With 900 public and private sector attendees, it became an overwhelming indictment of the automobile and the industry as polluters. APCD research director Dr. Leslie A. Chambers threatened “drastic action” against manufacturers if tailpipe emissions didn’t improve dramatically. The State didn’t wait long.

As 1959 dawned, the AMA made it clear that despite numerous claims made through the Fifties, they had no pollution control device anywhere near production ready. State Senator Richards and the Board of Health started discussing publicly the idea of a state air quality standard, while L.A. County supervisors called for a special session of the state legislature to address smog. Assemblyman Seth J. Johnson introduced a bill that would require all major automakers to appear before the legislature in February to explain their failings, while L.A. Mayor Norris Poulson proposed banning polluting automobiles entirely by 1961. Governor Edmund G. Brown introduced his own bill, asking the legislature to give his office the authority to legislate on matters of public health.

In 1960, he got it, in combination with a bill requiring what would become the PCV system, extracting crankcase fumes and reintroducing them to the intake stream. The legislature also called for the testing of a high-temperature catalytic converter and establishing carbon monoxide emissions standards.

It all took a couple of years to come together, but it wasn’t long before the idea of a California car took on a new meaning, as specialized engine and exhaust systems were developed. California’s executive office has never relinquished the power to legislate for the public health, even as national emissions and fuel economy standards were enacted.

You may not like or agree with California’s stand over the years, but it has consistently been a driver of progress in emissions and fuel economy, and we may all end up thanking them in the end.

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23 Responses to “1960: The smog war begins”

  1. Norm Murdock says:

    I won’t be charitable, sorry. Those laws were laid on top of an industry which was also dealing with automotive safety and the burdgeoning litigation culture. The Japanese, who you are swooning over, had been making micro/mini cars, and which were at first EXEMPT from domestic car production standards mandated by the EPA, NHTSA, and CARB. So the Big Three had this wild card, outside of the normal marketplace (in which they were thriving, by the way), and that wild card is called government interference. It turns out it didn’t need to happen with either Nader’s Corvair, nor did it need to happen with emissions. The Big Three consistently exceeded CAFE standards during the last 30 years. Why? Not because of anything the fools at CARB ever did. But because of brilliant internal combustion advances made by engineers working for GM, Ford, and Chrysler. The decline of American cars COINCIDES with the government meddling in the manufacturing of American cars. Had the government stayed out of it, for the most part, and instead spent its time breaking down barriers to other markets for American cars, our domestic car industry would be far more competitive. And advances in pollution abatement and mileage would have been organic, from supply and demand of the market forces, just like the forces which gave birth to the industry for it first 75 years without any government “help”.

    • John Jesensky says:

      You are quite right in your overall assessment of government’s affect on the auto industry, and American industry in general, over the past 50 years. The initial automobile emission legislation of the early 1960’s started a wave of government regulation which made it increasingly more difficult and costly for all manufacturers, not just the auto industry, to do business in this country, while, in contrast, countries such as Japan went out of their way to subsidize their industries. Government “activists” seized the opportunity to take more and more political control, imposing regulations with little or no touch with reality or care about the long-term consequences of their power grab. The net effect was to put our industries at a disadvantage relative to their offshore competitors, who did not have to grapple with the burden of ever more stringent anti-pollution and pro-union laws. To try to remain in business our industries did the obvious, taking manufacturing offshore to an increasing extent, and taking hundreds of thousands of American jobs with them. Now, in the 21st century, here we are wondering why our economy is sliding unstoppably down hill, watching billions of dollors of our capital flow permanently out of the country to creditors who hate us, and wondering (idiotically) what can be done to “create jobs.” Certainly inept and short-sighted management was (and continues to be) a major factor in the decline of American industry, but that early legislation set off a wave of decline that continues to this day.

      • volkswind says:

        Although I agree with most of your opinion, I do want to point out that instead of being away from meddling the auto industry, Japanese government had a long history of intentionally controlling its domestic auto industry, trying to decrease unhealthy domestic competition and focus all its force outward. As you may know, the company Honda started to build cars in the 60s, encountering the pressure from MITI, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, that small companies were forced to merge with big companies like Toyota and Nissan. By comparison, the US government was less powerful in this respect.

  2. marmer says:

    Wow. I always thought that air-pollution awareness and government regulation really began in the late 60s with the first emissions controls. Thanks for all the background, David.

    As a child of the 60s and an enthusiast, I am certainly willing to believe that government regulations led to less interesting, poorly performing cars. For a while. I’m also willing to entertain the notion that the Corvair got a raw deal.

    But I don’t buy the idea that the domestic auto industry’s troubles can be laid solely at the government’s feet, and I buy even less the idea that the free market alone would have led to any kind of substantive safety improvement or emissions reductions. Fuel economy, maybe, as gas prices rose. The truth is that Detroit got by for a long time on sloppy engineering, sloppy assembly, and brute-force performance simply because there were no real alternatives in the American market. Once the Japanese and Germans finally started making inroads and setting the bar a lot higher on durability, fit and finish, driving dynamics, and fuel economy, it took Detroit more than a generation to catch up. Did the overseas companies have unfair advantages, such as currency manipulation, put forth by their governments? Yes? Could our government have done more to help American automakers? Unquestionably. But I will never believe that the safer cars and cleaner air we breathe today would have happened if the government hadn’t forced the issue.

    • What he said.

      Our history of automobile laziness in non-consumer driven advancement is legendary. Adoption of seatbelts? Hello?

      People were literally dying, in the thousands, from smog. And in fact, this was in part consumer-driven legislation. There were protests, pickets and more. Hell on earth has a way of getting people riled up, and Detroit put, at best, minuscule effort into remedying the situation. This is, in fact, the way the earlier commentors want it to work: There was ample time throughout the Fifties for automakers to address the issue, legislation was a last resort.

      • Patrick says:

        What y’all both said. The auto industry was given an opportunity to self-regulate, which they opted not to do, rather spending their time arguing against the entire notion.
        The American auto industry was never built on exports. Ask someone in Britain what a Plymouth or Mercury is, and they certainly wont think of cars (unless they are car guys). It was built by selling its products to our internal market, then investing profits in other facilities and companies overseas to tap foreign markets.
        In the 50s, our economy was so far out ahead of any other economy in the world, that we had the luxury of having companies that could make these magnificent machines we love to study and drive. That part was always bound to fade as other economies caught up and resources (steel, rubber, oil, chrome, etc) became more valuable.
        Instead of planning for the future, and thinking of things like their own customers’ health and safety, they cashed in their profits, seemingly assuming the 50s would go on forever, when that just wasnt the case.
        I am grateful for clean air and water laws because even within my lifetime, I have seen a lot of things improve, though others have gotten worse.

  3. Kit Foster says:

    Interesting that the final photo is of a White steamer. Presumably it was being tested to compare its emissions to internal combustion automobiles. Steam cars are indeed cleaner, but they have other drawbacks that make them unlikely contenders for a general purpose clean-air auto.

    • You’re right there, Kit, it’s an ’11 White, tested in 1958. Hypothetically, as all that’s required of combustion in a steamer is heat, it could be jiggered to be hugely efficient and low in emissions. In practice, even in the finest steamers it was essentially an open flame.

  4. johnfromstaffs says:

    Clean Air Act, 1956
    4 & 5 ELiz. 2 CH. 52


    Not much in here about cars, but, due to the Great Smog of 1952 killing many Londoners, at least we had clean air legislation. The fact that there is now virtually no British car industry to clean up is a tribute to the sort of industrial dinosaurism that Marmer mentions above. Is Detroit going the same way as Coventry and Birmingham?

  5. DougD says:

    Early emissions controls were something that had to be suffered through so that we could arrive where we are at now, so in hindsight the process was lousy but it was necessary and worth it. I disagree that this would have happened organically, it did not happen in countries where it was not legislated.
    A lot of North American pollution was basically exported by relocation of dirty industry to low cost countries.
    Been to industrial China? I have and they got smog in spades.

  6. Jon Huettl says:

    In the photo with the three men looking over a manifold system is someone I had known in my youth. The gentleman on the left (only one with a hat) is Roger W. Jessup (LA County Supervisor 6th District..Pasadena) who at the time in 1943 chaired the first investigation into the new Los Angeles SMOG problem.

    One day I might write a book on Roger, but it is better to let somethings just fade away (sorry folks…no book). Yes I could write a book about his life because he raised me from the age of 6 under his roof as he would have raised one of his own sons.

    Well, one of the stories he would tell at the dinner table to his guests was his involvement in getting Pat Brown to go ahead and sign into law an Air Quality Act and how it got hijacked by the Petrochemical concerns back East……So folks, here is just part of the story Roger would tell:

    In the summer of 1943 we were at War and Industry in the Los Angeles area was just beginning take hold from all the new sciences that the United States Government had made available due to the War Effort. Los Angeles had expanded all kinds of new services to help the War Effort. In the County next to us, Kaiser had been busy building the first modern Steel Mill on the West Coast. Kern County to the north as well as Ventura County had increased California Oil production for the Los Angeles Refiners. Los Angeles was at War, our whole country was at War. Then the War came to Los Angeles on Setember 8th 1943 one day before Admissions Day. On that day Los Angeles had its first SMOG attack….yak, more yak..some names…more yak (remember I only heard this story about a zillion times as a kid)……So at a special Meeting of the Board of Supervisors I (Roger) was appointed to head an investigation into the SMOG and find the root of the problem.

    Now in my District was Cal Tech and I knew that they had been doing work for the Government on Chemical Air Research, So I went to them and asked them to look look into it and they agreed.

    Let me cut to the chase…..Report to Board of Supervisors 4 weeks later that the cause of the SMOG was a by-product of the New CATALYTIC PROCESS of Oil Refining in the form of Chemicals found in the Flare Gas produced by the new refining process.

    END OF STORY… That is all I am willing to tell at this time.

  7. macdhai says:

    Having passed through the 50’s as a teenager, and becoming a licensed driver of a hot 55 Ford, my awareness or concern about what was happening with the environment was non existent to say the least. My passion only was to drive fast, and thrill to the beautiful sounds that those dual glass pack mufflers created. During the 60’s with a semblance of adulthood I came to the realization something was out of balance between corporate America and mother nature. Much of the problem it seems to me was due to the automotive industry. With hindsight it seems to me that nothing would have changed that imbalance without government intervention. Bitter medicine it was, but necessary!

  8. Jim says:

    I’m glad to hear a number of folks who agree with me that it would be far better if we got government off our backs and let the air and the people in the cities take responsibility for their own air. I think we can trust that our domestic car makers would have done something voluntarily to address the “problems” caused by vehicles.

    • marmer says:

      Sure, let’s get government “off our backs!” Why stop with auto emissions? Let’s give heavy industry in general a free pass. Just let the market decide. Trust that our corporations will do something voluntarily to address the “problems” caused by air pollution.

      Let the people in the cities take responsibility for their own air. That’s right, all those people who have so many resources available to them for this “taking of responsibility.” You know, little kids, the elderly, the infirm. If they can’t breathe, they should just move somewhere else!

      OK. Stop. Breathe. Breathe again. Now go back and read David’s article.

      And for all of you who think the auto industry can voluntarily solve all its problems, even environmental ones, on its own, I remind you to look at what happened in 2008 when gas prices jumped through the roof (by US standards) and the Big Three got stuck with lots full of unwanted trucks.

  9. Norm Murdock says:

    DTA, I think you might be under the false impression that the carmakers didn’t push safety or offer safety. Ever hear of products liability litigation? They did. The PUBLIC didn’t want to pay for it. Ford famously tried selling safety in the 50’s and 60’s and it failed with consumers. Read up some. GM had an airbag option on Cadillac as early as the 1974 model year – almost no takers! Seatbelts, hello? Hey, Dave, where are the seatbelts on motorcycles, like the Nortons that got slobbered all over? You now want to ban Norton’s? Why not, if you’re logical, it’s far more “dangerous” to a passenger than a Pinto or a Corvair. Hey, man, if Hemmings is going to lead the hobby into the VERY unfriendly future of ever-tightening regulation, we don’t need to be conceding that government is the answer. It’s the problem! Owl Gore wants to take our IC cars away. If I want to ride a Norton without a seatbelt (duh), that would be called “My Choice”. And if LA’s local pollution problem, which was a DIRECT result of its terrible urban sprawl, had been allowed to be addressed by the FREE MARKET, then people would have voted with their feet. Would a smaller, less-crowded LA be SUCH a terrible thing? Instead, it’s a powderkeg of humanity packed in tight like a rabbit warren. Pollution is an “early warning sign” for people to MOVE to some place else. And it’s for the LOCAL government to do what it needs to do. Not for Uncle Spam to craft an LA solution for people in Boise or Omaha or Savannah, or (ahem) Vermont!

  10. For anyone who has been to China you can see what happens when cars and industry goes unregulated. I remember not long ago I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t run a straight pipe to replace my catalytic converter and boost up the HP up a little bit. As I type this I am looking out on the Beijing sky where you are lucky if you can see a mile. Think of what its like if you let off a smoke bomb in your living room and waited about 30 seconds, then you can know what this place looks like. US muscle cars are a part of our history and I hope they are always on the roads, but we really need to be grateful that when I look up at the sky and see gray it is because its about to rain, not because there is a choking cloud of noxious fumes. Nevermind their ‘dirtier’ cities, where you can stare at the sun at noon on a summer day and wonder if that’s the moon.

    • Patrick says:

      I spend the summer of 2001 working in Beijing. It was early 2002 before I stopped coughing up black stuff.

    • volkswind says:

      I’m a Chinese who has spent two years in West Lafayette, IN, USA studying in my master degree program. I’ve lived in Tianjin my hometown, studied in Shanghai where my university is, and worked in Beijing for one year. By my personal comparison, China as a whole just doesn’t have any place that can offer acceptable economic prosperity and air quality at the same time. Cars here as well as coal-burning power plants are emitting pollutions for the ever-fast growing economy. Nothing can stop it, seriously. I just wish this situation can be put under a certain degree of control in the following years. It’s far from being livable.

  11. Chris says:

    I do enjoy all of the China references with the communist/socialist government which can control everything w/o reproach, yet fail to control the emissions. Just amazing how big government is never quite big enough and how all those innocent babies, kids, and old people are being protected by it.
    …also funny how this so quickly became a political philosophy blog.

    • volkswind says:

      My take from the current situation in China is, the serious environmental problems now Chinese people are facing just have emerged out so fast that people never could imagine. Only one decade ago, people were still debating over how to boost the production of cars, especially high-end luxury cars, as well as the consuming capability of the people. The most famous example here I can think of is, in early 2000, the government of Beijing prohibited the hatchback cars, as people believe they are low-end and low-priced, running on the Changanjie, the most iconic street in China. People were encouraged to buy new cars. Situation simply flipped over from encouraging to prohibiting over night. Too fast to control.

  12. onisac says:

    As I recall automobiles were the first thing charged, with smog emissions. Industry and factories weren’t charged with causing smog until much later. How unfair was that?.. The emission controls that were added to cars took away horse power and torque. That and the more expensive gasoline, thus the end of Muscle cars as we know it.. I feel if the powers that be would have started with industries cars never would have been considered a big enough issue, to need emission
    control costly parts and power problems.

    • dan says:

      this is a direct correlation with business and government…..
      that being said, pollution would never be controlled until is affects the political stymie that controls money and money that controls politics…..it’s all about MONEY in the pocket folks

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