Environmental journalists visit area to learn about infamous smog incident
Mark Soroka
The Donora Smog Museum is becoming a major resource center for people who want to learn more about environmental history.
Mark Soroka
Dr. Charles Stacey, one of the survivors of the Donora smog incident, was interviewed during the Society of Environmental Journalist’s visit.
Mark Soroka
The Society of Environmental Journalists sponsored a field trip to the Donora Smog Museum as part of its annual five-day national conference in Pittsburgh.
Mark Soroka
Journalist educators from the Society of Environmental Journalists listen to a presentation at the Donora Smog Museum.
It has been 69 years since a temperature inversion created a wall of smoke that claimed the lives of 26 people in Donora, and while the smog incident has been thoroughly analyzed and documented, environmental journalists are still seeking answers about what really happened.
Recently, the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) organized a bus tour to visit the site of Donora’s former zinc works and hear a presentation at the Donora Smog Museum. SEJ sponsored the tour in conjunction with its annual five-day conference, which was held this year at the Wyndham Hotel in Pittsburgh.
According to William Kovarik, Ph.D., professor of communication at Radford University and a former member of SEJ’s board of directors, the smog incident was a watershed in environmental history.
“What happened in Donora kicked off a global policy discussion about air pollution and led to the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency,” said Kovarik. “That was the beginning of a movement to improve the quality of air in the United States.”
A former environmental reporter for the Associated Press, Baltimore Sun and Charleston Post & Courier, Kovarik has sought to uncover the truth behind complex environmental issues.
“As journalists, our job is to seek the truth and act independently,” he said. “We try to get the facts on the table and let people make up their own minds about which policy options seem to work best. There are plenty of people who are in denial about scientific facts. If you look back at the Donora smog, there were people who dismissed what happened. I think the public would be happy to know that we are always digging for the truth.”
Kovarik added that SEJ invited U.S. Steel and the Pennsylvania Coal Association to attend the presentation in Donora but both organizations declined to participate.
“We wanted to make sure these organizations knew that they were invited,” he said. “We always want to get the industry perspective.”
Several residents of Donora delivered presentations during the tour, including Brian Charlton, archivist and curator for the museum; David Lonich, a local author; and Dr. Charles E. Stacey, a former administrator for the Donora and Ringgold school districts.
Charlton told SEJ’s journalists that Donora’s mill workers worked in brutal conditions but persevered.
“These were guys that stormed the beaches of Normandy during World War II,” he said. “After what they went through, what was a little smoke to them? They just kept on going to work to support their families.”
Nadia White, director of the University of Montana’s graduate program in Environmental Science and Natural Resource Journalism and a former reporter for the Casper Star-Tribune, was one of 35 journalist educators who took part in the field trip. The group also included educators from Harvard University, Columbia University, University of Michigan, University of Colorado Boulder, Carnegie-Mellon University, Radford University and other colleges. White likens the Donora smog incident to a problem that is occurring in the mountains of western Montana.
“I can imagine what conditions were like here in Donora,” she said. “We are experiencing air contamination in my area because of wildfires and wood fire smoke. Just like Donora, we have inversions that exacerbate the problem. In some places, the air quality has become so hazardous that towns have been advised to evacuate. I think we learned a lot of lessons from the Donora smog incident but we haven’t solved the problem completely.”
Mark Pawlec, a volunteer at the Donora Smog Museum, said that many groups such as SEJ are showing an interest in the smog tragedy.
“Recently, 20 DEP staff visited our museum for a one-day workshop,” he said. “In the near future, students from California University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie-Mellon University and Point Park University will be making similar visits to hear presentations about our smog history. We hope people will continue to benefit from the lessons we learned in Donora.”