The Clean Air Act as implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency has been one of our nation’s most successful laws—a jewel in the crown of American Democracy. Before EPA there were no legal or regulatory mechanisms to protect our air or our water—and filthy industry practices treated our skies and water as cesspools.
The photos below, taken from the 1950s through the mid-1970s, remind us vividly why EPA serves a crucial purpose. The idea that we would dismantle clean air and water protections is scandalous—and one need only look back to see what a future without environmental protections would look like.
Fumes pour out of the Olin Mathieson Chemical Plant in Louisiana. July, 1972.
The George Washington Bridge in heavy smog. View toward the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. May, 1973.
Polluted Androscoggin River, New Hampshire. June, 1973.
A sugar mill in Oahu belches black smoke over its green sugar cane fields. October, 1973.
A worker in California wears a face mask to filter ash and soot-filled air so he can breathe. September, 1973.
Dead bird in polluted water. Corpus Christi, TX. November, 1972.
Pollution of Great Lakes in Michigan. May, 1968.
Sound advice from a car parked in Lower Manhattan. May, 1973.
The polluted Lake Charles in Louisiana, with dangerously high levels of mercury. June, 1972.
Fire on the Cuyahoga River, due to pollution. November, 1952.
Children play in the yard of their Washington home, while Tacoma Smelter stack showers the area with arsenic and lead residue. August, 1972.
Smoke from the Atlas Chemical Co. covers neighboring communities with black soot. June,1972
Peabody Coal Company in the Black Mesa area of Northeastern Arizona. 1973
Clark Avenue and Clark Avenue Bridge in Cleveland, Ohio. Looking east from West 13th Street, area obscured by smoke from heavy industry. July, 1973.
Next to the U.S. Pipe plant – a heavily polluted area of Birmingham, Alabama – residents face industrial smog. July, 1972 (LeRoy Woodson)