The Los Angeles Times has launched Smoglandia, a four-part article series and six-part podcast examining L.A.’s decades-long battle with smog — with a Caltech researcher at the center of the story.
Arie Haagen-Smit, a Dutch-born professor of bio-organic chemistry at Caltech, had been studying plant biochemistry when he turned his attention to the smog that was killing crops across Southern California and darkening the region’s skies. By 1952, he had identified the recipe: unburned hydrocarbons from car exhaust and industrial emissions, combined with nitrogen oxides and sunlight, produced ground-level ozone, the brown, acrid photochemical smog that was choking the basin.
The discovery was not warmly received. The auto industry dismissed it. But Haagen-Smit’s findings — and the regulatory framework they made possible — fundamentally reshaped California’s approach to air quality and, eventually, the American automobile.
The series also highlights the role of Arnold Beckman (PhD ’28), inventor and Caltech trustee, who recruited Haagen-Smit to investigate smog as a scientific advisor to L.A.’s early air pollution control efforts. And it features a 1959 educational film in which Haagen-Smit explains his work, rescued from a film canister in a Caltech closet by Rick Flagan, the Irma and Ross McCollum-William H. Corcoran Professor of Chemical Engineering and Environmental Science and Engineering.
Smoglandia is hosted by LA Times columnist Patt Morrison, who will also appear in conversation with Diana Kormos-Buchwald at the next Techer Live event, “Einstein: Beyond the Myth,” on April 14.
Read the full series at the LA Times →
Listen to the Smoglandia podcast →
