island. impact the atmosphere of new york was bombarded with more man-made contaminants than any other big city in the country—almost two pounds of soot and noxious gases for every man, woman, and child. so great is the burden of pollution that were it not for the prevailing wind, new york city might have gone the way of sodom and gomorrah. john c. esposito, vanishing air (1970) initial estimates of health effects and casualties it was not initially clear to the medical community how many casualties and illnesses had been caused by the smog—or indeed, whether the smog had caused any casualties at all. the population of the area affected by the smog has been estimated at 16 million. a november 26 story by jane brody in the new york times cautioned that it would likely take "a month or more" before investigators had enough data to assess whether the smog had caused any deaths. three days later, after studying admissions to municipal hospitals for cardiac and respiratory complications, the city commissioner of hospitals joseph v. terenzio told the press "i can report almost with certainty that there was no detectable immediate effect on morbidity and mortality because of the smog. ... it now seems unlikely that final statistical analysis will reveal any significant impact on the health of new york city's population." early reports of injuries focused not on respiratory damage, but on car or boating accidents caused by poor visibility. nonfatal health effects were difficult to measure in the smog's immediate aftermath. some of the health effects were themselves delayed; for example, most of the serious effects on the elderly population would only manifest days after initial exposure. a study on the smog's nonfatal health effects was published in december 1966. the study, conducted by a nonprofit health research group, found that 10 percent of the city's population had developed some negative health effects from the smog, including symptoms like stinging eyes, coughing, wheezing, the coughing-up of phlegm, or difficulty breathing. the director of the research group said anything serious enough to adversely affect as much as 10 percent of the population, like the smog had, indicated the existence of a serious public health problem. subsequent estimates of casualties the earliest report of casualties came in a special message by president lyndon b. johnson sent to congress on january 30, 1967. in the message, the president said 80 people had died in the smog. johnson did not cite a source for that claimed estimate of deaths, and there is no known source concluding that 80 people died other than those citing johnson. two major medical studies have analyzed the extent of casualties from the smog. leonard greenburg—the same medical researcher who had previously published findings on the death count of the 1953 and 1963 smogs—published a paper in october 1967 showing that the previous year's smog had likely killed 168 people. greenburg showed that there were 24 deaths in excess of how many would normally be expected at that time of year every day, over a period of seven days—using a period four days longer than the smog itself had lasted because of the delay between smog exposure and resultant health effects. greenburg said that his analysis could not account for damage during the smog that would remain latent and continue to cause disease and death for years. the results of greenburg's paper were reported by the new york times. the smog was compared to the 1948 smog in donora, pennsylvania, and the 1952 great smog of london, both of which lasted five days. the london smog's death toll of 4,000 was far higher than donora's, but the smog in donora was far more severe; at the time of its smog, donora was a small industrial town with a population of only 13,000 and its population was proportionally hit much harder than london's, with 20 deaths and smog-related illnesses among 43 percent of the population. pollution experts estimated that if a smog event as powerful as donora's had occurred in the much more populous new york city, the death toll could have been as high as 11,000 with four million ill. urban life and smog the incinerator plant at gravesend bay in brooklyn, 1973. the 1966 smog demonstrated the interconnected nature of seemingly disparate problems of urban life, such as waste management and pollution. the smog brought into focus the interrelation of environmental problems and other, complex facets of urban life. by chance, several conditions happened to prevent the smog from reaching its fullest potential strength. since the event began over the long thanksgiving weekend, not the workweek, many factories were closed and far fewer commuters were in traffic than normally would be. the unseasonably warm weather reduced the need for central heating. on november 25, the high of 64 °f (18 °c) broke the previous record high for that date, leading the reporter homer bigart to describe the apartment-heating restrictions as "no problem" for residents. these mitigating factors meant that pollutant levels—as well as the ensuing death toll and other adverse health effects—were likely lower than they could have been in less favorable conditions. attempts by city government to react to the smog had unintended negative side effects. as mayor lindsay reflected in his 1969 book the city, "very time you shut down an incinerator, you increase the amount of garbage on city streets." efforts to address a given environmental problem can cause undesired side effects, sometimes unforeseeable, and often related to a city's limited resources. environmental harms in general are linked to urban decay and social inequality. after the 1966 smog, the task of reducing air pollution became an essential part of the municipal government's goal to make "the city attractive again to the middle class and acceptable to all its residents." such harms—but especially those that generate obvious and unpleasant effects, as smog does—were among many factors that motivated and exacerbated white flight from american cities, including new york city, in the mid-20th century. the mass migration of affluent residents—motivated at least in part by environmental harms like chronic smog—drained the city's tax base and resulted in an economic loss of human capital. residents who remained in the city often lacked the financial resources that would have enabled them to move somewhere else, even if they had wanted to flee the unpleasant environment and health hazards caused by pollution. the burdens of that pollution—including the direct effects of pollution itself, indirect effects (such as uncollected garbage in the streets), and other problems stemming from lack of municipal resources after white flight—became "emblems of larger governmental neglect and social inequality" to those residents. political reaction national attention the smog is commonly cited as one of the most-visible and most-discussed environmental disasters of the 1960s in the united states, alongside the 1969 santa barbara oil spill and the 1969 cuyahoga river fire. national public awareness of the smog and its health effects spurred the nascent environmental movement in the united states and galvanized support for legislation to regulate air pollution. vernon mckenzie, chief of the air pollution division of the federal public health service, called the smog "a warning of what can happen—and will happen—with increasing frequency and in wider areas unless something is done to prevent it." in the 1968 book killer smog, william wise warned that the 1966 smog and the 1952 london smog represented a vulnerability to air pollution disasters among american cities: perhaps, as in great britain, change will begin to come only after a large-scale tragedy. the conditions are favorable for one in any of a dozen of the nation's most populous cities. a mass of still air drifting slowly eastward, an intense thermal inversion, and then five, six, seven days of increasingly poisonous smog. the air will look bronze, almost copper-colored, as it did during new york's 1966 thanksgiving smog. ... from every appearance, a similar tragedy is now being prepared in america—and there is very little time left in which to prevent it. at the time of the smog event, only half of the urban population of the united states lived with local protections on air quality; the smog event catalyzed the call for federal regulation on the issue. spencer r. weart of the american institute of physics said the american public "did not take the problem seriously" until the 1966 smog. according to weart, an important factor driving awareness of the smog was its location, as events in new york "always had a disproportionate influence on the media headquartered there." municipal response john lindsay (pictured in april 1966) was the mayor of new york city during the 1966 smog.smog in may 1973. by 1972 new york city had cut levels of sulfur dioxide and particulates by half from their peak. before the 1966 smog, the city government had been slow to act to regulate air pollution. despite general awareness of the health and environmental impacts of smog, other problems took priority: as the new york times reported, issues like "housing, crime, education and keeping the city 'cool' were at the forefront of city government concerns." but the 1966 smog impelled a swift response by the city government, who now felt pressure to respond "in the aftermath of disaster." lindsay, then a liberal rockefeller republican, had run as a supporter of stronger air pollution control in his 1965 mayoral campaign, and the 1966 smog reinforced lindsay's position on the issue. city council member robert a. low, a manhattan democrat and chairman of the city subcommittee on air pollution, criticized lindsay for failing to enforce an air-pollution bill that had been passed in may. the bill, authored by low, would update city incinerators and require apartment buildings to replace their incinerators with other garbage disposal methods. low accused lindsay's administration of "dragging its feet" on the problem of air pollution, which lindsay called a "political attack." the mayor's office prepared a report in the aftermath of the smog, singling out the coal-burning consolidated edison company, city buses, and apartment building incinerators as significant contributors to air pollution. the report noted that the change in weather that dispersed the smog "spared the city an unspeakable tragedy," and that if new york city had stagnant smog at the high levels commonly found in los angeles, "everyone in the city would have long since perished from the poisons in the air." consolidated edison began using a fuel with lower sulfur content, and by june 1969 the city had reduced the level of sulfur dioxide in the air by 28 percent. in december 1966, the new york city administrative code section on pollutant levels in the air was strengthened by a bill that was later described as the "toughest air pollution control bill in the country" at that time. lindsay announced a plan to install 36 new stations for the department of air pollution control to measure air pollution levels throughout the city—an upgrade from the sole station in the harlem courthouse building. the stations would send data to a central computer using telemetry to create a profile of the city atmosphere. five of those stations would also send data to the interstate sanitation commission. the city purchased a computer system and equipment from the packard bell corporation for $181,000 ($1.14 million in 2021 dollars). in november 1968, the city opened 38 monitoring stations, 10 outfitted with computer equipment. the 10 computerized stations were designed to send data every hour to the central computer, while the other 28 operated manually as backup. the old index system used during the 1966 smog, which produced a single number from multiple measurements, was abandoned as simplistic and unhelpful. the new index system was similar in that it used weather forecasts and measurements of pollutants in the air and had three progressive stages of severity ("alert," "warning," and "emergency") requiring stronger actions by city, industry, and citizens. the city's actions mitigated air pollution and reduced the likelihood of a major smog event on the same scale. in contrast to dire warnings from the mayor's air-pollution task force in its may 1966 report, a city official said in 1969 "e probably have the possibility of a health catastrophe under control now." the city declared minor smog alerts in 1967 and 1970; conversely, a four-day inversion similar to the