The weather was just right — a perfect atmospheric inversion that captured the city’s unprecedented industrial and auto emissions, and on July 16, 1943, blanketed Los Angeles in its first recorded smog event. “Smogtown” authors Chip Jacobs and William Kelly talk with Hear in the City producer Sara Harris about the panic and placation that ensued. It’s the kickoff of HiC’s Toxic Tour series, “Air Check: petroleum and air pollution from a community perspective.”
With the support of Newsdesk.org and Spot.us, Hear in the City’s reporters will follow the path a barrel of oil from the place it’s extracted to where it’s refined and beyond. Your small donation to “Air Check” will help fund our continued investigation of all these issues.
Newsdesk.org’s award-winning, crowd-funded Toxic Tour project comes to Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco. We’re working with local news producers in each city to help develop and fund their work, and put neglected public-health issues “on the map.”
Newsdesk.org supports independent news radio.