page_title: 1966 New York City smog
section_title: Federal response
hierarchical_section_title: 1966 New York City smog / Political reaction / Federal response
caption_attribution_description: English: This is a retouched picture, which means that it has been digitally altered from its original version. Modifications: cropped, automatic retouching on brightness, contrast, tone. The original can be viewed here: Clean Air Act Signing.jpg&#58;&#160;. Modifications made by Brandt Luke Zorn.
context_page_description: The 1966 New York City smog was a major air-pollution episode, during which the city's air became filled with damaging levels of several toxic pollutants. Smog covered the city and its surrounding area from November 23 to 26, coinciding with that year's Thanksgiving holiday weekend. It was the third major smog in New York City, following events of similar scale in 1953 and 1963.
  On November 23, a large mass of stagnant air over the East Coast trapped pollutants in the city's air. For three days, New York City was engulfed in dangerously high levels of carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, smoke, and haze. Pockets of air pollution pervaded the greater New York metropolitan area, including parts of New Jersey and Connecticut. By November 25, the smog became severe enough that regional leaders announced a "first-stage alert". During the alert, leaders of local and state governments asked residents and industry to take voluntary steps to minimize emissions. Health officials advised people with respiratory or heart conditions to remain indoors. The city shut off garbage incinerators, requiring massive hauling of garbage to landfills.
context_section_description: Air pollution control, already a priority of President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration, became a greater concern after the smog. By early 1967, his statements on air pollution became more rhetorically urgent. In January 1967, Johnson sent a message to Congress entitled "Protecting Our National Heritage," the first section of which was entitled "The Pollution of Our Air" and focused on the problems posed by air pollution. The message was prompted by wide public discussion of the problem following the 1966 smog. Johnson cited the experiences of specific American cities and towns in the message, and highlighted the 1966 smog at length:
  Two months ago, a mass of heavily polluted air—filled with poisons from incinerators, industrial furnaces, power plants, car, bus and truck engines—settled down upon the sixteen million people of Greater New York.
  For four days, anyone going out on the streets inhaled chemical compounds that threatened his health. Those who remained inside had little protection from the noxious gases that passed freely through cooling and heating systems.
  An estimated 80 persons died. Thousands of men and women already suffering from respiratory diseases lived out the four days in fear and pain.
  Finally, the winds came, freeing the mass of air from the weather-trap that had held it so dangerously. The immediate crisis was ended. New Yorkers began to breathe "ordinary" air again.
  
  "Ordinary" air in New York, as in most large cities, is filled with tons of pollutants: carbon monoxide from gasoline, diesel and jet engines, sulfur oxides from factories, apartment houses, and power plants; nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons and a broad variety of other compounds. These poisons are not so dramatically dangerous most days of the year, as they were last Thanksgiving in New York. But steadily, insidiously, they damage virtually everything that exists.
  Johnson called for a bill regulating toxins in the air and increasing funding for pollution programs. Edmund Muskie, a Senator from Maine and political environmentalist, praised Johnson's words, pledged to hold hearings on the proposals, and would soon sponsor the Johnson administration's bill, which became the Air Quality Act. Muskie also co-sponsored bills in 1967 for research on non-polluting automobiles using either electric or fuel cell technology. While discussing the research bills on the Senate floor, Muskie said "the serious air pollution situation in New York City [in November of 1966] dramatically illustrated what our cities may be facing in the future if an alternative to the [internal] combustion engine is not developed."
  Congressional interest and public pressure for greater air pollution regulation had existed since the signing of the 1963 Clean Air Act, the first federal legislation on the issue, but further action had been opposed by members of Congress who believed responsibility for air regulation properly lay with the states, not the federal government. Partly in response to the added public pressure spurred by the smog event, Congress passed and Johnson signed the 1967 Air Quality Act, which amended the 1963 Clean Air Act to provide for study of air quality and control methods.
  The Air Quality Act was a significant advancement in the realm of air-pollution regulation, but one that was ultimately ineffective. In Train v. Natural Resources Defense Counsel, a 1975 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice William Rehnquist summarized the law's effect as follows:
  The focus shifted somewhat in the Air Quality Act of 1967, 81 Stat. 485. It reiterated the premise of the earlier Clean Air Act 'that the prevention and control of air pollution at its source is the primary responsibility of States and local governments.' Its provisions, however, increased the federal role in the prevention of air pollution, by according federal authorities certain powers of supervision and enforcement. But the States generally retained wide latitude to determine both the air quality standards which they would meet and the period of time in which they would do so
caption: President Johnson signing the Air Quality Act of 1967. The law, a series of amendments to the 1963 Clean Air Act, was enacted in response to the 1966 smog.
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