A lethal 1948 smog event catalyzed decades of progressively stricter federal air pollution statutes

Evidence

A tragedy, the “Donora death fog,” helped focus national attention. A temperature inversion, combined with lethal fumes from zinc and steel factories, overwhelmed the air around Donora, Pennsylvania, on October 29, 1948. These fumes darkened the sky at noon, and soon people were choking, gasping for air. Before the Donora death fog dissipated, it made hundreds of men, women, and children sick and claimed twenty victims, dead from asphyxiation. Government entered the picture, but quite slowly. In the 1950s, there were grants to state and local government, for research on problems of air pollution. Congress passed a Clean Air Act in 1963; a Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act, in 1965; an Air Quality Act in 1967; and a Clean Air Act in 1990. These laws were progressively tighter; they began to set up actual standards of air quality, and put some muscle behind pollution control. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 4169

Categorization

• QUESTION: Nearby paragraph mentions a Clean Air Act in 1990 that Friedman says tightened standards—worth checking whether he means the 1970/1977/1990 CAA series, since the 1990 law was the last major reauthorization.
• ADDENDUM: Connects directly to the polyad’s Noise Control Act strand: the same 1960s-70s federalization pattern (environmental statutes, EPA creation) is the institutional backdrop the course’s environmental law readings sit inside.