PENNSYLVANIA: Death at Donora

Fog settled down on the grimy industrial towns of Pennsylvania’s Monongahela Valley one day last week, blurred the bleak outlines of steel mills and foundries, and softened the glare of great furnaces. At sooty Donora (pop. 13,500), it was particularly heavy; the hills stand close and no breath of breeze had reached its streets. The haze thickened as locomotives and the high stacks of U.S. Steel’s huge Donora Zinc Works sent fumes into the still air. But nobody paid much attention to the smoke-laden mist. The zinc plant had been operating for more than 30 years and Donora has often had fog.

A Choking Sensation. The first to discover that the smog had assumed peculiar qualities was a man walking home late at night. He was seized with a paroxysm of choking. But he had little time to reflect on the fact that the fog had assumed an odd, penetrating odor. He sat down on the curb, toppled over and died.

Others awakened to experience the same awful choking sensation. By morning, as the fourth day of fog began, more were dead and scores of people were complaining of difficulty in breathing. Doctors, hurrying to answer calls, quickly concluded that the fog was lethal mainly to elderly people suffering from asthma or heart trouble. But they were puzzled about its effects. Victims seemed to suffer partial paralysis of the diaphragm. Nothing but oxygen seemed to bring relief.

By mid-afternoon nearby hospitals were jammed with people receiving oxygen treatments, and the Red Cross had set up an emergency station. Firemen moved through streets with portable oxygen bottles. A state of emergency was declared and elderly people were warned to leave the area. But, in 36 hours, hundreds had become ill and 19 people had died.

“Plain Murder.” What had caused their deaths? Medical authorities remembered that over 60 people and hundreds of horses and cattle had perished during a heavy fog in Belgium’s Meuse Valley in 1930; industrial gases had mingled in the fog, had gone through a series of chemical reactions and resolved into droplets of sulphuric acid. Dr. William Rongaus of the Donora Board of Health was certain that his town’s tragedy was also the result of industrial fumes collecting in the motionless, humid air. Said he, bitterly: “It’s plain murder.” The zinc smeltery shut down. At week’s end, the cause of the trouble “was still unknown. But rain had stirred the fog and apparently ended the danger.