Smoglandia Pt 4: SCIENCE AND GOVERNMENT, BESTIES?

Summary

Boiling Point: Smoglandia Pt 4 – SCIENCE AND GOVERNMENT, BESTIES?

Podcast: Boiling Point
Host: LA Times Studios, Pat Morrison
Episode: Smoglandia Pt 4: SCIENCE AND GOVERNMENT, BESTIES?
Release: November 20, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of the Smoglandia series explores the complicated (and often contentious) relationship between science, government, and industry in Los Angeles’ battle against air pollution. Hosted by Patt Morrison, it interweaves personal stories, history, and expert interviews to recount LA’s journey from smog-choked city to a national leader in clean air policy—a journey paved with resistance, political maneuvering, regulatory innovations, and scientific breakthroughs. The episode zeroes in on how public officials (like LA County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn), scientists, and activists teamed up (and sometimes clashed) to pressure automakers and regulate pollution—often facing powerful opposition from Detroit, Big Oil, and even California’s own politicians.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Memories of Smog and Survival in LA

• Seraphine Seagal’s Story (00:01–04:26)
  • Artist and teacher Seraphine Seagal recalls moving to LA from Louisiana, describing the choking, colored stench of smog in the 1970s.
  • She recounts driving with a gas mask in her convertible to survive the air—an act immortalized in an LA Times photograph that made its way back to her Louisiana hometown.

    "The thing about smog is that it smelled, and it smelled a color to me…yellowish, greenish, murky…almost like a horror movie." —Seraphine Seagal (02:07)

  • The story connects personal experience, environmental health, and the city's culture of car dependency and ingenuity.

2. Early Misconceptions, Polluters, and Quirky Regulations

• Bizarre Efforts and Denial (04:45–08:45)
  • For decades, Angelenos coexisted unhappily with smog. Before the real causes were scientifically pinned down, everyone and everything—from pipe smokers to housewives shaking dust mops—was blamed.
  • Political leaders swung between wild optimism ("smog could be cut by 80% in two years") and cynical resignation.
  • The city’s adaptation included peculiar regulations and a sense that smog was simply the price of progress.

    “We can never go back to the old days where the air was clean and pure and sweet and scented with orange blossoms.” —Mayor Fletcher Bowron (06:35)

3. The Backyard Incinerator Fiasco

• Household Pollution Sources (08:45–11:05)
  • LA’s beloved backyard incinerators—over half a million strong—spewed tons of smoke despite mounting evidence of their harm.
  • Public officials themselves were slow to change (even Supervisor Kenneth Hahn’s wife burned trash at home).
  • Incinerators were eventually banned in 1958, giving rise to curbside trash pickup and landfills.

4. Government Pressure on Industry: The “Pen Pal” Campaign

• Kenneth Hahn vs. Detroit (11:05–23:02)
  • Supervisor Kenneth Hahn’s 15-year letter-writing campaign to Detroit automakers relentlessly demanded smog control technologies.
    • He cited LA’s status as the biggest car market and threatened local regulations.
    • Automakers responded dismissively, claiming that exhaust "does not present an air pollution problem." (12:06)
  • Hahn escalated, seeking legal authority to mandate smog devices and performing local surveys to prove feasibility.
  • Eventually, federal authorities sued the car companies for conspiring to avoid pollution controls, confirming Hahn’s suspicions—though political settlements let the auto industry largely off the hook.

    "I believe after seven years the automobile industry has had plenty of time to meet its responsibility to the people of Los Angeles county, yet it has not done so." —Kenneth Hahn (read in narration, 19:27) "The presidents of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler should be brought to trial right here in Los Angeles." —Kenneth Hahn, recounted by Janice Hahn (21:16)

  • The campaign also exposed the contradictions of LA’s car culture; Hahn himself came from a car-loving family, yet insisted industry change.

5. Regional and State Regulatory Innovations

• Birth of the AQMD and CARB (25:30–28:56)

  • Thick regional smog led to the creation of multi-county air authorities—culminating in the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) in 1977.
  • Unified rulemaking replaced a patchwork of local efforts.
  • Smog alerts, air monitoring, and public outreach became new tools in the fight.
    • Colored maps and daily reports made air quality part of civic life.

    “…It was green if it was good. Yellow was a moderate ozone pollution. Orange was unhelpful for sensitive people…And then red, which we very seldom used, was unhealthful for everybody.” —Fritz Coleman, weather forecaster (25:47)

• California State Power and Its Limits

  • The California Air Resources Board (CARB) was created in 1967, with Ari Haagensmith, the scientist who discovered photochemical smog, at its helm.

  • Despite scientific leadership, politics intervened—Governor Reagan eventually fired Haagensmith and other experts, replacing them with industry allies on the eve of crucial pollution votes.

    "When done properly, a regulatory regime that is motivated by environmental considerations ultimately in the long term is going to make for better business decisions as well as better environmental outcomes." —David Zerler, Caltech Heritage Project (29:33)

  • Federal law and a California waiver allowed the state to set stricter standards than the EPA, anchoring its national leadership for decades.

  • Yet, political winds shifted—sometimes pushing air policy forward, sometimes pulling back.

6. Science, Technology, and Industry Pushback

• Scientific Breakthroughs and Industry Resistance (28:15–33:32)
  • Even as regulatory power grew, scientists like Haagensmith and inventors like Eugene Houdry (developer of the catalytic converter) faced relentless opposition from automakers and oil companies.
  • The first effective smog devices required unleaded gasoline. Only when leaded fuel was phased out in 1973 did catalytic converters become standard (from 1975 on), drastically reducing car emissions.
  • Progress still came in fits and starts, often only after years of regulatory, legal, and political struggle.

7. Enduring Themes: Persistence, Public Health, and Ongoing Challenges

• Victories and Setbacks (21:34–34:00)
  • The persistence of public officials, scientists, and activists eventually forced industry and government action, leading LA out of its smoggiest days.

    “He just never backed down. It was his persistence. I mean, I think after five years I would have quit writing letters.” —Janice Hahn, on her father (22:27)

  • Yet, the fight continues, with new technologies and policies evolving in response to ongoing climate and pollution challenges.
  • The episode concludes by looking ahead to California’s zero-emission vehicle goals and the next generation of regulatory "Queens of Green" (34:00).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On LA's transition:

  “Southern California was trying to craft a unified region from its smaller smoggy cities. But what was the state of California doing to assert its pollution power?” —Pat Morrison (27:07)

• On regulatory influence:

  “Big market meant big influence. Hahn was throwing around veiled threats of regulation in one of the automaker's biggest markets. They needed to come up with a plan, and in this case, business competitors found it more fruitful to stick together.” —Pat Morrison (17:30)

• On policy and science:

  "The automobile industry fought him tooth and nail. The oil companies did the same thing because it became very clear that all their refineries were spewing enormous amounts of smog producing vapors into the air, just like the automobiles did." —(Haagensmith’s wife, via narration, 29:14)

• On science and politics:

  “Whenever science has to get into the boxing ring with politics, it's often politics that lands a decisive punch.” —Pat Morrison (28:56)

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Timeline of Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------| | 00:01 | Seraphine Seagal’s smog memories and gas mask | | 02:07 | Describing smog’s “color” and horror | | 04:45 | Origins of smog blame games in LA | | 08:45 | The backyard incinerator problem | | 11:05 | Kenneth Hahn’s letter campaign begins | | 15:22 | Legal groundwork for requiring smog controls | | 19:27 | Hahn to Ford: "Plenty of time to act" | | 21:16 | Hahn’s anger at the lack of industry prosecution | | 25:30 | Smog alerts and TV weather integration | | 26:46 | Creation of the South Coast AQMD | | 28:15 | Launch of the California Air Resources Board | | 29:33 | Business and environmental regulation | | 32:00 | Political intrigue: Reagan fires CARB experts | | 34:00 | The path to catalytic converters and progress |

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Tone and Style Notes

• Patt Morrison’s narration is witty, accessible, and vividly detailed—often mixing serious investigative history with a dash of humor and cultural awareness.
• The episode maintains a brisk, story-driven structure, interspersing interviews, historical readings, and period quotes.
• The tone is skeptical of industry and political doublespeak, celebrating both scientific rigor and civic persistence.

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Conclusion

This episode vividly illustrates how LA's battle with smog required decades of scientific inquiry, committed officials, and sometimes bruising political battles—especially when public health was pitted against entrenched business interests. Through memorable personal stories and detailed historical analysis, it shows how progress against pollution came—and continues to come—through relentless persistence, regulatory innovation, and the uneasy but essential partnership between science and government. The episode sets the stage for discussions about California’s ongoing leadership in clean air, zero-emission vehicles, and the broader climate fight, while never letting listeners forget the city’s smoggy, hard-earned lessons.

Transcript

[Seraphine Seagal]

This is an la times studios podcast. I was teaching at Pierce College, and after class, it was a nighttime class, so after class I would go down to a country western bar before I'd come home, and there was this guy talking about his chainsaw leaning against the bar. And I went, oh, my God, I have to have his babies. And I went up to him, I said, can I. Can I borrow your chainsaw? I have one. I said, I have one, but I had some work in my house and I think somebody stole it. He says, no, you can't borrow it. I'll come to your house. I'll cut it down, okay? So he came, and we were together 14 years before I died.

[Pat Morrison]

What a line. Can I borrow your chainsaw?

[Seraphine Seagal]

Oh, here's even better. When I took the cabinets out of here to make my studio after he passed away, I found the chainsaw.

[Pat Morrison]

That's Seraphine Seagal, an artist, a painter, a graphic designer, and a teacher living on an enchanting piece of acreage of house and garden in Studio City.

[Seraphine Seagal]

When I moved here, we used to have frogs, toads and stuff, and at night they would do their little chirping back and forth and communicating. And this year, and I don't know if it's because I have chickens or not, but this year I have seen more birds in my garden than I've seen in years.

[Pat Morrison]

If you hadn't had to traverse the LA freeways to get here and you simply opened your eyes and looked around, there's nothing here that you would associate with the valley. Pretty things appear as if they had grown here. A sizable fountain, the bright twinkling of tchotchkes suspended in trees and hanging in doorways. Untroubled chickens meander along the grounds and. And the dogs have already found and claimed my producer's lab. So you've lived in this place for 50 years?

[Seraphine Seagal]

50 plus, yeah.

[Fritz Coleman]

Ouch.

[Pat Morrison]

For someone who came here from the Louisiana countryside, LA had taken some getting used to.

[Seraphine Seagal]

The thing about smog is that it smelled, and it smelled a color to me, because I live in color. The way I described it was yellowish, greenish, murky. It's almost the smell of smog was kind of like a horror movie, you know, after somebody's thrown up in the movie and you imagine the smell. So to me, that's what it smelled like.

[Pat Morrison]

Yet she took to LA and to its life of living on four wheels. In 1979, there she was, driving around the city in her snazzy little convertible, wearing one very personal aftermarket accessory.

[Seraphine Seagal]

I was driving over Laurel Canyon in a little British racing car, a Triumph TR4, to teach a class at the AG&I Museum on Wilshire. I was recently from the Louisiana swampland into California, and I didn't know what smog was, but I knew I couldn't breathe. So I got this gas mask with two filters on it, and whenever I was in my convertible in traffic, I would wear it.

[Pat Morrison]

And this is how I found Seagal. Or rather, she found me. I was writing a column about the very subject of this podcast, the Story of L. A Smog, and I unearthed a photo in the Times archive. A woman driving in her Triumph convertible wearing a Dorothy Hamill haircut and a gas mask.

[Seraphine Seagal]

I am just before sunset, and a car pulled up next to me and flashed, literally, a neon sign that said LA Times. And he motioned to me if I would move over. And I'm going, well, he's probably from the LA Times, because who else would have a neon sign flash like that? So I pulled over, and he said that he was a writer and photographer for the Times. Could he take a picture of me with my gas mask?

[Pat Morrison]

That photo of her with her pixie hair and cheeky attitude made its way everywhere, even to her grandfather's general store in Gonzales, Louisiana, the jambalaya capital of the world.

[Seraphine Seagal]

But when it appeared in the Times, it also appeared on the AP wire service. And back in Louisiana, one of the country people went up to my grandfather and said, leon, don't you have a granddaughter in California? And he says, sure do.

[Pat Morrison]

By the time Seagal was bopping around town in her little Triumph convertible, Southern Californians had known for a good 25 years where most of the smog was coming from right out of the exhaust of millions of cars like hers. Driving created smog, and the smog was driving some Angelenos out Up in the Bay Area, a legislator said he'd heard 10,000 people were leaving L. A every year. Smack in the middle of that October 1954 smog siege, a South San Gabriel woman hammered a for sale sign into her front lawn, leaving because of smog. Before Hagensmit named the blame as the internal combustion engine, everything was suspect. One of LA's serial pollution chiefs warned that, quote, anyone who smokes a pipe even contributes to the smog menace. And just you let a match smolder after lighting a cigarette and get dirty looks for pollution police. Nothing was beyond suspicion. At one point, I do not jest. Housewives were asked not to shake their dirty dust mops outdoors. Dust mops? I shook my head at that one. Also my mop. Even the optimists came off as pessimists. One county pollution boss said cheerfully that he thought smog could be cut by 80% within two years. But then, he said, industries would start using uranium and radium, and pretty soon we'd have radioactive smog. Good times. But most Angelenos were settling into an unhappy coexistence. Smog was here to stay. Make the best of it. A longtime LA mayor named Fletcher Bowron said as much on his radio show. We can never go back to the old days where the air was clean and pure and sweet and scented with orange blossoms. I'm Pat Morrison and you've crossed the border into smoglandy. Pollution, pollution. Wear a gas mask and a veil. They're drinking the water and breathing.

[Jesse Alejandro Cottrell]

During one of the most severe windstorms Southern California experienced in more than a decade, the Palisades and Eaton fires ignited, leaving heartbreaking losses in our communities. Now, as we build back, we're building stronger, cleaner and more resilient in communities most vulnerable to dangerous weather conditions and wildfires. Southern California Edison is placing power lines underground, hardening the electric system by installing wires with protective coating, and adding advanced technology to help keep communities safe. So when Southern California faces the next storm, the next most severe event, we'll be ready. Learn [e-mail] disasterrecovery and if you were impacted by the Eaton fire, you may qualify for direct compensation through Southern California Edison's Wildfire Recovery Compensation Program. File your claim directly with no legal fees, no litigation, and receive payment in months, not years. To file and learn more, visit sce.com directclaims I'm Jesse Alejandro Cottrell.

[Emily Dreyfus]

And I'm Emily Dreyfus and this is Pacific Standard Time.

[Pat Morrison]

We have stories from all over the.

[Narrator/Host or LA Times Announcer]

State of California, all the big battles.

[Pat Morrison]

That are happening here, Prop 50, housing, affordability and immigration.

[Emily Dreyfus]

And we're really excited to bring you the stories about how California is dealing with what it means to be alive in 2025.

[Narrator/Host or LA Times Announcer]

Subscribe to Pacific Standard Time, a new.

[Pat Morrison]

Weekly show from the San Francisco Standard.

[Emily Dreyfus]

We'll have new episodes every Wednesday starting November 19th. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Pat Morrison]

The air pollution police had already cleared a lot of the low hanging polluters by the 1960s. Like sources of smoke and gasoline fumes, like oil storage sites, air monitors went up all over LA county in the 1950s. The Navy sent up blimps to monitor the air for a time. A sheriff Cessna took to the sky twice a day with cameras and an Air to ground radio to nail polluters in the act. So it boggles the mind that one of LA's biggest pollution self owns went chuffing right along for years, right in our own backyards. Unique to Los Angeles, almost every house had a personal backyard incinerator. Angelenos burned every scrap of household trash and that cruddy smoke went up and out and over everything. A thousand tons a day and more.

[David Zerler]

You didn't need to be an atmospheric chemist to appreciate that burning trash in your backyard is going to create a toxic brew.

[Pat Morrison]

This is David Zerler, the director of the Caltech Heritage Project.

[David Zerler]

You know, the idea that there wasn't regular trash pickup, municipal trash pickup in Pasadena until relatively recently, in the 70s and the 80s, it's an amazing thing to think about.

[Pat Morrison]

Incinerators were free trash disposal and Angelenos just loved that. Something like a half million of them were still chuffing away in LA county in the early 1950s and across Orange county even as smog was strangling the people who use them. Hello. In July 1955, an LA county supervisor named Kenneth Hahn had made it his mission to get the filthy air of LA made fit to breathe. But at the same time, his own wife was burning trash in the Hahn family's backyard incinerator in south la. His daughter Janice is one of five Los Angeles county supervisors and she remembers it very clearly.

[Emily Dreyfus]

My mother, after dinner every night, would gather up the paper trash and she would go in our backyard and there was a little literal incinerator and she would burn our paper trash. That of course ultimately was outlawed. But you know, people had certain practices that were funny to us now but were very much a part of how they got rid of their trash.

[Pat Morrison]

Incinerators were banned across la county by 1958, which is how we came to have curbside trash pickup, not free, but not smoggy either, and landfills to bury our junk instead of burning it. When I say Kenneth Hahn made it his mission to clean up LA's air, Mission Impossible became Mission or Else. On February 19, 1953, he wrote two letters. They were the first of their kind, but would not, as it turned out, be his last. Mr. Henry Ford II the first one began. President Ford Motor Company Detroit, Michigan.

[Narrator/Host or LA Times Announcer]

Dear Mr. Ford, as one of the five supervisors of Los Angeles county, the largest county governmental unit in the nation, I am vitally concerned with the problem of air pollution.

[Pat Morrison]

And then he jumped right into the arena where he would stay for about 15 years, mixing it up with the big three automakers Hahn laid out the case for the urgency of getting smog under control and reminds Ford of something they no doubt both knew.

[Narrator/Host or LA Times Announcer]

Los Angeles has the largest per capita concentration of motor vehicles in the world.

[Pat Morrison]

And that the gases from them are part of the smog problem. Then Han wants to know one, are.

[Narrator/Host or LA Times Announcer]

There any devices which can be attached to automobile exhaust manifolds or pipes which would effectively reduce exhaust gases? Two, if so, can these devices be produced inexpensively on a mass scale? 3, if there are not any such devices, is work being done to perfect anything to accomplish the same results? If so, what progress has been made?

[Pat Morrison]

And he went on point by point. Two weeks later came the first response, three short, sharp paragraphs in a letter written not by Henry Ford, but by a PR man. And it bordered on the snippy. The Ford engineering staff, although mindful that automobile engines produce exhaust gases, feels these waste vapors are dissipated in the atmosphere quickly and do not present an air pollution problem. Therefore, our research department has not conducted any experimental work aimed at totally eliminating these gases. The fine automotive power plants which modern day engineers design do not smoke. And he puts smoke in quotes only. Aging engines subject to improper care and maintenance burn off. Red Cape, meet bull. And so began a remarkable nearly 15 years long exchange of letters between Detroit carmakers and that LA supervisor named Kenneth Hahn. When you're the youngest of seven boys, as Hans was, and your father dies before you're born as Hans, did you grow up to be a scrapper? The youngest member of the Board of Supervisors, he showed his willingness to swim upstream when he was the only white politician in the state of California to meet with Martin Luther King on his visit to la.

[Emily Dreyfus]

And you know, my dad and his brothers owned a gas station, so they liked cars too.

[Pat Morrison]

I didn't know that.

[Emily Dreyfus]

Gage and Maine, it was called the Hahn Brothers Gas Station. And he launched his first City council campaign in 1946 from that gas station. And the story my uncles would tell me was cars would come in to fill up and unbeknownst to them, they would leave with a bumper sticker saying Hahn for City Council on the back.

[Pat Morrison]

Hahn retired to his corner for a few months and in December came out swinging. He also wrote letters to General Motors, Packard and Chrysler.

[Narrator/Host or LA Times Announcer]

By scientific facts, it has been called to the attention of the Board of Supervisors by recognized authorities that automobile fumes coming from the exhaust contribute to the air pollution in Los Angeles county to a considerable degree. I have received a legal opinion from our County Council, Mr. Harold W. Kennedy, which states that the Board of Supervisors of this county may pass such legislation that is reasonable and could require automobiles sold in this country to be equipped with a device approved by the Air Pollution Control District.

[Pat Morrison]

He got varying degrees of responses, from informative to patronizing. Not for nothing was the youngest Hahn brother hip to the ways of cars and gas stations. Hahn's interest in requiring cars in LA county to be equipped with smog control devices was not an empty threat. In 1954, he ordered a headcount of all automobiles, all auto body shops and LA county mechanics, so that he could get a rough estimate on how long it would take to equip all vehicles in LA county with a manifold exhaust should one ever be approved by the Air Pollution Control District.

[Emily Dreyfus]

So I think he was fighting this from a couple of angles. And of course he was getting pushback from the automakers on his ideas. But I do think he was trying everything at his disposal to see whether or not legally they could require cars in Los Angeles county to do a certain to have a smog control, as.

[Pat Morrison]

California eventually did statewide. Right?

[Emily Dreyfus]

Exactly.

[Pat Morrison]

The man grew up in a car culture. The family ran a gas station. Moreover, his constituents lived in la, not Detroit. His constituents bought cars. A lot of cars. The science and the politics meant to him that smog was obviously LA's problem, but Detroit's responsibility. The big carmakers did not like being told what to do. They did not like being told to install seat belts or airbags. And once they saw which way the smog was blowing, they certainly did not like the looks of regulations to make them make cleaner cars. In the 1950s, what Detroit gave us instead was razzle dazzle. Bigger cars, gas eating engines, cars with chrome and big fins. At a national air pollution conference in 1959, a man named Chauncey Leake, an assistant dean at Ohio State University's medical school, mocked Detroit for it. When are the automobile and truck manufacturers going to turn from the first foolishness of fins, from silly style whims, from oversized models, and from too much horsepower to the essential but tough job of controlling exhausts? The showdown was coming, and it was coming right here. In the mid-1950s, pretty much one in every 10 cars Detroit made was sold in California. In December 1958, a Cadillac limo was about to be delivered to LA's mayor as his new official city car. He refused to take it. Smog was a killer, he said, and he wanted no part of a business that had a hand in creating it. So he bought an amusing little Nash Rambler instead. Hahn was playing a stronger hand than that. The R word regulation meant the same thing in Detroit as it did 2,000 miles away in Los Angeles. And Hahn was not subtle about making that clear to carmakers. Big market meant big influence. Hahn was throwing around veiled threats of regulation in one of the automaker's biggest markets. They needed to come up with a plan, and in this case, business competitors found it more fruitful to stick together. Han continued writing back and forth. It went for a dozen years like a tennis match with postage stamps. Each time, Han asking when they'd have a smog device developed. Each time, the brush off. General Motors. We are continuing intensive development of the catalytic converter. Chrysler, the question of whether a device will be ready in 1958 is not answerable. Packard, our engineering department, has at its disposal various types of analytical equipment and through constant research and experimentation have increased the efficiency of burning fuel many fold in the last several years. And each time Hahn getting more and more exasperated. In 1960, he informed Henry Ford II.

[Narrator/Host or LA Times Announcer]

I believe after seven years the automobile industry has had plenty of time to meet its responsibility to the people of Los Angeles county, yet it has not done so.

[Pat Morrison]

Two years later, in a letter to General Motors, Ford Motors and Chrysler, he.

[Narrator/Host or LA Times Announcer]

Said, Since February 19, 1953, I have corresponded annually with the chief executives of the major automobile corporations. During this period, major scientific accomplishments have been achieved. Man has gone into space. He has orbited the world. Electronics have advanced in every field. The jet airplane has been developed for normal passenger travel. Yet the new automobiles coming from Detroit are still not equipped with a device to control fumes, which remain the major air pollution factor in Los Angeles County.

[Pat Morrison]

In 1967, Hahn reminded Democratic president Lyndon Johnson's attorney general, Ramsay Clark, that the supervisors had been asking for years for an investigation into whether the car industry was illegally conspiring to balk at installing smog control devices. Well, in early 1969, just as the executive branch was about to change hands from a Democratic president to a Republican one, the department of justice did file a civil antitrust suit against the big four automakers, contending they had conspired to fend off anti pollution devices, even buying up their patents to keep them off the market. The federal grand jury found evidence. But later in 1969, Nixon's Justice Department settled out of court. The carmakers didn't admit doing anything wrong, and the secret grand jury proceedings would remain secret.

[Fritz Coleman]

Whew.

[Pat Morrison]

Boy, was Janice Hahn's father mad.

[Emily Dreyfus]

That was a big of a little bit of a disappointment to my father. And I think one of his favorite quotes is he says the presidents of.

[Narrator/Host or LA Times Announcer]

General Motors, Ford and Chrysler should be brought to trial right here in Los Angeles.

[Emily Dreyfus]

So Phil Burton then, when he was a member of Congress, got the evidence unsealed and it proved that my dad was right.

[Pat Morrison]

She's right. A California congressman showed the world a secret document, a memo supposedly from the Justice Department's antitrust division around 1968, recommending that the Big Four automakers be hit with a charge of criminal conspiracy. The memo contains supposed grand jury testimony and exhibits that convinced those earlier prosecutors that the carmakers agreed not to compete, to develop, to make or install air pollution control devices, quote, for the purpose of achieving interminable delays, or at least delays for as long as possible. And eventually, reluctantly, they had agreed to install these devices if necessary, all at the same time. After all those years and all those stamps. Turns out Kenneth Hahn was right all along.

[Emily Dreyfus]

He had a lot of victories over his many of his 46 years in public office. A lot of victories, but this was really a huge one. And he just never backed down. It was his persistence. I mean, I think after five years I would have quit writing letters.

[Pat Morrison]

Yeah, just the price of stamps going up alone. Hans pen pal letters weren't the only part of LA county government getting more aggressive about smog. How it happened after the break.

[Fritz Coleman]

A.

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[Pat Morrison]

While Kenneth Hahn was rattling the saber or the letter opener with the big three, air pollution officials were realizing that Angelenos needed to know more about smog and than what their red eyes and raw throats were telling them. Pollution bosses tried to figure out how to keep the public in the know about air quality. In the early 1970s, for example, Ventura County's air pollution office tried calling each school to let them know about smog alerts and to keep kids indoors. But telephoning took so long that sometimes the alert was over before they got through the call list. They tried to call in number to check air pollution status in your zip code and briefly A rudimentary radio frequency. But what worked best and longest were official smog alerts. They began in 1955 and over time were refined into three stages. Eventually there were thousands of alerts, sometimes 100 or more in one year. Mostly first stage alerts, sometimes second, and almost never, not since 1974. A stage three alert, that's pretty amazing in itself. Stage one, unhealthy. Stage two, very unhealthy. Try to keep the kids inside. Stage three, hazardous. When authorities could close down businesses, schools, recreation, and most traffic, but pretty much didn't do it. Each stage was set by how many parts per million of ozone were in the air. And for health experts, the numbers were always too low. Nowadays you can get air quality alerts on your smartphones for everything from wildfire smoke to the air around a refinery explosion. But back then, you relied on the newspapers, which published smog forecasts right alongside the weather predictions and radio and the TV weatherman.

[Fritz Coleman]

Though the AKMD was a big part of our forecast every day.

[Pat Morrison]

That's Fritz Coleman. And for about 40 years, for millions living in smoglandia, he was the weekday weather forecaster for Channel 4, the NBC affiliate in Southern California, delivering the smog news along with the temperatures, both in.

[Fritz Coleman]

The current situation, particularly if it was bad, and the future, the forecast for the following day. And I remember the colors on the old map. It was green if it was good. Yellow was a moderate ozone pollution. Orange was unhelpful for sensitive people, meaning if you had asthma or pulmonary issues or cardiac issues, stay away. And then red, which we very seldom used, was unhealthful for everybody. And their recommendation was that you would stay out of the sunshine during the day if you could, because it was bad.

[Pat Morrison]

The smog alerts helped by transcending the artificial political boundaries of dozens of cities stitched together in a huge basin. Smog anywhere meant smog everywhere. One city, one county couldn't do much. Several counties could. So in January 1977, a new year and a new agency were born. Prior to the south coast, there were.

[David Zerler]

The four individual county air pollution control districts.

[Pat Morrison]

Here's Sam Atwood, who should know, because he worked for that new agency, the aqmd, for years. So there was the Los Angeles air pollution control district, San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange county, and it was the amalgamation of those four counties.

[David Zerler]

People just called it the aqmd.

[Pat Morrison]

Kind of a mouthful, even at that. It wasn't the most mellifluous acronym. Scanquim squammed, but it acknowledged that air pollution was no respecter of lines of. On a map, four counties were united and together began making and enforcing rules that eventually cut tons of pollution from fixed sources like power plants and the ones moving around the freeways. Ladies and gentlemen, check your filthy engines. Southern California was trying to craft a unified region from its smaller smoggy cities. But what was the state of California doing to assert its pollution power? In 1967, a brand new governor and a Republican one, Ronald Reagan, signed a bill creating carb, the California Air Resources Board. Part of the battle against air pollution would now be fought by the biggest state in the union flexing its muscle. The next year, Reagan appointed that father of Photochemical Smog, Dr. Ari Hagensmit, to head up the new carb board.

[David Zerler]

The amazing thing from in the trajectory of Ari Hagenschmidt's career is that he goes from the ivory tower professor who's only really interested in the basic chemistry to become director of carb, the California Air Resources Board.

[Pat Morrison]

This is Caltech historian David Zerler.

[David Zerler]

So he goes up to Sacramento and he begins what becomes the world's first and leading program devoted exclusively to air pollution from a regulatory political perspective that has all of the authority of the state of California.

[Pat Morrison]

But as we know from those sci fi movies, whenever science has to get into the boxing ring with politics, it's often politics that lands a decisive punch. Hage had not been shy about wanting smog control to be job one. Here's a reading from his wife Zeus from her Caltech oral history.

[Emily Dreyfus]

The automobile industry fought him tooth and nail. The oil companies did the same thing because it became very clear that all their refineries were spewing enormous amounts of smog producing vapors into the air, just like the automobiles did.

[Pat Morrison]

Here is Caltech Zirler again.

[David Zerler]

But I think one of the lessons in the interplay between private enterprise and government regulation, particularly when it comes to environmental regulation, is that when done properly, a regulatory regime that is motivated by environmental considerations ultimately in the long term is going to make for better business decisions as well as better environmental outcomes.

[Pat Morrison]

Reagan was a conservative Republican, a business minded guy, but I didn't expect to read this. Four years after Hagee took on the CARB job, Reagan ordered him investigated for possible conflict of interest. The question did serving on the CARB board, which paid him about $10,000 a year, create a conflict with him being a paid scientific advisor to the LA Air Pollution Control District? Here's what Reagan said about it at the time, read by an actor imitating the governor's. This was news to us He's a very distinguished man. He's known, of course, as the man who discovered smog. He's served all of California well, but of necessity. And since this information came to light, I've asked State Resources Secretary Norman Livermore to look into this. Odd, right? Hagee's work at the LA agency was no secret. But four years after he took the CARB job, there was suddenly a conflict. Growing up in the LA Times newsroom, where the saying was, if your mother says she loves you, check it out. I wondered, was this just about the CARB board's powers overlapping la's? Or had some businesses miffed about Hagee's forceful enforcement dropped a word to someone in the governor's office like 1972 does, 2025. A year later, Hagee announced he'd be leaving CARB once the governor had a qualified replacement. Well, a few months later, Reagan fired Hoge along with three of the other five CARB board members. Reagan replaced Hoge with a Republican politician who just lost his re election bid. The petrochemical expert on the board was replaced by an ex VP of Standard Oil. Oil. And Standard Oil's nickname in California was the Octopus, for its powerful political grasp far beyond its own business. Reagan dumped them all less than a week before a big CARB vote to require that owners of used cars, models 1966 through 1970, install a smog control device. The Sacramento Bee called Reagan's firings a ruthless political act, and the new board voted to delay the retrofit requirement. 1967, the same year CARB was created, the federal government gave California the equivalent of political power steering. The Federal Air Quality act empowered the feds to control interstate air pollution with a special bonus for California. Republican Senator George Murphy had crafted an amendment for California Carve out. Because our air pollution was so terrible, California could request federal permission to set stricter air pollution standards than the rest of the country. And California did and got permission for more than 50 years thereafter. Now this bit I love. Senator Murphy had been an actor, song and dance man in MGM musicals and was a friend and mentor of Reagan's. Three years later, 1970, the year of the first Earth Day, the California waiver was confirmed by the Clean Air act, signed on New Year's Eve by President Richard Nixon. But it was still almost always two miles forward, one mile back again. Proposition Los Angeles. Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman worked for 10 years before he could drag a more muscular version of the Clean Air act across the legislative finish line in 1990. It gave Southern California more time to meet federal clean air standards, which it almost never has, and required that cleaner burning fuel be sold in all the nation's smog bound bergs. President George H.W. bush signed it, but 17 years later his son's administration told California no when the state wanted to set its own tailpipe emissions rules. But then two years later, President Obama's administration gave that a big green light. So California got special power to deal with a special smog. But politics could only go so far. And here's where technology stepped on stage during the game changing smog attack of October 1954. Edward Roybal, the first Latino elected to the LA City Council in almost 70 years had delivered some startling news to his colleagues. There was a car exhaust catalyst that could help cut the smog. A device perfected by a Mr. Eugene Houdry. And Roybal said L A should be testing it. Houdry was a French chemist and a hero of both world wars. He patented a method called a catalytic cracker. It turned petroleum molecules into gasoline more efficiently which also meant more and faster pollution. But about 20 years later, Houdry read about Hagen Smith's discovery of the cause effect between cars and smog. And Houdry invented a catalytic converter process to clean up pollution from gasoline. However, these early catalytic models only really worked with unleaded gas. But once the US started winding down leaded gasoline in 1973, Milfeus and so from 1975 on, new car models on California roads had to have catalytic converters to change the bad exhaust stuff into harmless stuff. They do that with rare elements like palladium and platinum, a couple of precious metals more at home in a jewelry box than under a car. That's why thieves steel are catalytic converters for those metals worth as much as a thorough thousand bucks for vehicle at some shady scrap metal dealer. Also after 1975, most of the cars Detroit made to sell everywhere were also California qualified. Then in 1990, California began requiring more zero emission vehicles. And boy do we have some tales to tell you about that in the next episode. In the summer of 1979, while Serafine Seagal was tooling around Los Angeles in her little convertible and her big smog mask, another woman up in Sacramento was about to take on a very large job. She was Governor Jerry Brown's choice for the new chief of the state Air Resources Board. And she would serve on that board under four governors, Republican and Democratic. And it didn't take long before she earned a nickname and the authority to go along with it. The Queen of Green. Smoglandia is hosted by me, Pat Morrison. Our senior producers are Mary Knoff and Jonathan Shiflett of Studio Phonic. Our editors are Hugo Martin, Shelby Grad and Steve Clow. Our Director of Library services is quite Kerry Schneider. Special thanks to Ben Kramer for reading Kenneth Hahn Additional sound design and engineering by Hannis Brown. Our podcast Marketing Manager is Bryn Jura and our Product Marketing Director is Becca Dorman. Special thanks to LA Times Studio President Anna Mogzanian, President and Chief Operating Officer of the Los Angeles Times, Chris Argentieri and Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Times, Terry Tang. Smuglandia is executive produced by Darius Derek Sean.

[Narrator/Host or LA Times Announcer]

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