"In the especially nasty autumn of 1954, women in June Cleaver dresses and gas masks protested outside the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. Three-year-old Agatha Acker, in a cute gingham outfit and gas mask, brought along her doll, Betty Lou, also tricked out in a pretty dress, and a gas mask."
"Angelenos were moving away, and tourists were staying away. A hundred years of perky boosterism were being obliterated by smog."
"On Valentine's Day 1953, a young L.A. County supervisor named Kenneth Hahn wrote the first of almost 15 years' worth of letters to the big carmakers."
Eighty years ago, Los Angeles was plagued by smog, leading to a decline in air quality that residents could not ignore. Mayor Fletcher Bowron warned citizens that the clean air of the past was gone forever. In 1954, public protests emerged, with citizens donning gas masks to highlight the severity of the pollution. The smog crisis drove people away from the city and deterred tourists, overshadowing a century of optimism. Activists, including Kenneth Hahn, began advocating for cleaner air and accountability from car manufacturers.
Read at Los Angeles Times
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