Simulating Scenarios for Killer Smog Conditions in Pittsburgh

Route Fifty: A curtain of dense, yellow smog killed 20 residents and shortened the lives of countless others in the industrial town of Donora, Pennsylvania, in 1948, when a temperature inversion trapped pollution in the breathable air in and around the borough southeast of Pittsburgh. Had the inversion lasted an extra day, an estimated 1,000 people would have perished.

Fast forward to the present century, when air pollution and heat waves increasingly pose challenges to cities domestically and abroad—including 15,000 excess deaths in France in August 2003.

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