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1948 Donora Smog
The 1948 Donora smog killed 20 people and caused respiratory problems for 6,000 of the 14,000 people living in Donora, Pennsylvania, a mill town on the Monongahela River southeast of Pittsburgh. The event is commemorated by the Donora Smog Museum. Sixty years later, the incident was described by ''The New York Times'' as "one of the worst air pollution disasters in the nation's history." Even 10 years after the incident, mortality rates in Donora were significantly higher than those in other communities nearby. Incident The fog started building up in Donora on Wednesday, October 27, 1948. By the following day it was causing coughing and other signs of respiratory distress for many residents of the community in the Monongahela River valley. Many of the illnesses and deaths were initially attributed to asthma. The smog continued until it rained on Sunday, October 31, by which time 20 residents of Donora had died and approximately one third to one half of the town's population of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donora, Pennsylvania
Donora is a borough in Washington County, Pennsylvania, United States, approximately south of Pittsburgh on the Monongahela River. Donora was incorporated in 1901. It got its name from a combination of William Donner and Nora Mellon, banker Andrew W. Mellon's wife. The borough's nickname is "The Home of Champions", mainly because of the large number of famous athletes who have called Donora their home, including Baseball Hall of Fame outfielders Stan Musial and Ken Griffey Jr. Agriculture, coal-mining, steel-making, wire-making, and other industries were conducted in Donora early in its history. In 1910, 8,174 people lived in Donora; in 1920, 14,131; and in 1940, 13,180. According to U.S. census figures, the population was 4,781 in 2010 and 4,558 in 2020. Donora is a Rust Belt location which has lost most of its industrial capacity. It is in the "Mon valley", downriver from Charleroi and upstream of Braddock. History In 1794, the Whiskey Insurrectionists held several ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fluorine
Fluorine is a chemical element with the symbol F and atomic number 9. It is the lightest halogen and exists at standard conditions as a highly toxic, pale yellow diatomic gas. As the most electronegative reactive element, it is extremely reactive, as it reacts with all other elements except for the light inert gases. Among the elements, fluorine ranks 24th in universal abundance and 13th in terrestrial abundance. Fluorite, the primary mineral source of fluorine which gave the element its name, was first described in 1529; as it was added to metal ores to lower their melting points for smelting, the Latin verb meaning 'flow' gave the mineral its name. Proposed as an element in 1810, fluorine proved difficult and dangerous to separate from its compounds, and several early experimenters died or sustained injuries from their attempts. Only in 1886 did French chemist Henri Moissan isolate elemental fluorine using low-temperature electrolysis, a process still employed for modern pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Berton Roueché
Clarence Berton Roueché, Jr. ( ; April 16, 1910 – April 28, 1994) was an American medical writer who wrote for ''The New Yorker'' magazine for almost fifty years. He also wrote twenty books, including '' Eleven Blue Men'' (1954), ''The Incurable Wound'' (1958), ''Feral'' (1974), and ''The Medical Detectives'' (1980). An article he wrote for ''The New Yorker'' was made into the 1956 film ''Bigger Than Life'', and many of the medical mysteries on the television show ''House'' were inspired by Roueché's writings. Biography Berton Roueché was born in Chicago on April 16, 1910, to Clarence Berton Roueché Sr., a tailor, and Nana Maria Mossman His paternal great-grandparents emigrated from France. He graduated from Southwest High School in Kansas City in 1928 and is a member of the Southwest High School Hall of Fame. He received an undergraduate journalism degree at the University of Missouri in 1933. He was a reporter for ''The Kansas City Star'', the ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Environmental Protection Agency
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent executive agency of the United States federal government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it began operation on December 2, 1970, after Nixon signed an executive order. The order establishing the EPA was ratified by committee hearings in the House and Senate. The agency is led by its administrator, who is appointed by the president and approved by the Senate. The current administrator is Michael S. Regan. The EPA is not a Cabinet department, but the administrator is normally given cabinet rank. The EPA has its headquarters in Washington, D.C., regional offices for each of the agency's ten regions and 27 laboratories. The agency conducts environmental assessment, research, and education. It has the responsibility of maintaining and enforcing national standards under a variety of environmental laws, in consultation with state, tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clean Air Act (1970)
The Clean Air Act (CAA) is the United States' primary federal air quality law, intended to reduce and control air pollution nationwide. Initially enacted in 1963 and amended many times since, it is one of the United States' first and most influential modern environmental laws. As with many other major U.S. federal environmental statutes, the Clean Air Act is administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in coordination with state, local, and tribal governments. EPA develops extensive administrative regulations to carry out the law's mandates. The associated regulatory programs are often technical and complex. Among the most important, the National Ambient Air Quality Standards program sets standards for concentrations of certain pollutants in outdoor air; the National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants program sets standards for emissions of particular hazardous pollutants from specific sources. Other programs create requirements for vehicle f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspapers and broadcasters. The AP has earned 56 Pulitzer Prizes, including 34 for photography, since the award was established in 1917. It is also known for publishing the widely used '' AP Stylebook''. By 2016, news collected by the AP was published and republished by more than 1,300 newspapers and broadcasters, English, Spanish, and Arabic. The AP operates 248 news bureaus in 99 countries. It also operates the AP Radio Network, which provides newscasts twice hourly for broadcast and satellite radio and television stations. Many newspapers and broadcasters outside the United States are AP subscribers, paying a fee to use AP material without being contributing members of the cooperative. As part of their cooperative agreement with the AP, most ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Cincinnati
The University of Cincinnati (UC or Cincinnati) is a public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio. Founded in 1819 as Cincinnati College, it is the oldest institution of higher education in Cincinnati and has an annual enrollment of over 44,000 students, making it the second largest university in Ohio. It is part of the University System of Ohio. The university has four major campuses, with Cincinnati's main uptown campus and medical campus in the Heights and Corryville neighborhoods, and branch campuses in Batavia and Blue Ash, Ohio. The university has 14 constituent colleges, with programs in architecture, business, education, engineering, humanities, the sciences, law, music, and medicine. The medical college includes a leading teaching hospital and several biomedical research laboratories, with developments made including a live polio vaccine and diphenhydramine. UC was also the first university to implement a co-operative education (co-op) model. The university is accre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Amdur
Mary Ochsenhirt Amdur (February 18, 1921 – February 16, 1998) was an American toxicologist and public health researcher who worked primarily on pollution. She was charged with studying the effects of the 1948 Donora smog, specifically looking into the effects of inhaling sulfuric acid by experimenting on guinea pigs. Her findings on the respiratory effects related to sulfuric acid led to her being threatened, her funding being pulled, and her losing her job at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1953. Undeterred, she carried on her research in a different role at Harvard, and subsequently at MIT and New York University. Despite the early controversy related to her work, it was used in the creation of standards in air pollution, and towards the end of her life she received numerous awards and accolades. Early life Mary Amdur was born in 1921 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She received a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1943 from the University of Pittsburgh, moving to Cornell ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', also known simply as the PG, is the largest newspaper serving metropolitan Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Descended from the ''Pittsburgh Gazette'', established in 1786 as the first newspaper published west of the Allegheny Mountains, the paper formed under its present title in 1927 from the consolidation of the ''Pittsburgh Gazette Times'' and ''The Pittsburgh Post''. The ''Post-Gazette'' ended daily print publication in 2018 and has cut down to two print editions per week (Sunday and Thursday), going online-only the rest of the week. In the 2010s, the editorial tone of the paper shifted from liberal to conservative, particularly after the editorial pages of the paper were consolidated in 2018 with '' The Blade'' of Toledo, Ohio. After the consolidation, Keith Burris, the pro-Trump editorial page editor of '' The Blade'', directed the editorial pages of both papers. Early history ''Gazette'' The ''Post-Gazette'' began its history as a four-page w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zinc Smelting
Zinc smelting is the process of converting zinc concentrates (ores that contain zinc) into pure zinc. Zinc smelting has historically been more difficult than the smelting of other metals, e.g. iron, because in contrast, zinc has a low boiling point. At temperatures typically used for smelting metals, zinc is a gas that will escape from a furnace with the flue gas and be lost, unless specific measures are taken to prevent it. The most common zinc concentrate processed is zinc sulfide,. which is obtained by concentrating sphalerite using the froth flotation method. Secondary (recycled) zinc material, such as zinc oxide, is also processed with the zinc sulfide.. Approximately 30% of all zinc produced is from recycled sources. Methods There are two methods of smelting zinc: the pyrometallurgical process and the electrolysis process. Both methods are still used. Both of these processes share the same first step: roasting. Roasting Roasting is a process of oxidizing zinc sulfide co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute
The UPMC Hillman Cancer Center (Hillman), previously titled the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI), is a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center located in the Hillman Cancer Center in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, adjacent to UPMC Shadyside. The only NCI-designated cancer center in Western Pennsylvania, Hillman is composed of collaborative academic and research efforts between the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), and Carnegie Mellon University. Hillman provides clinical cancer care to some 74,000 patients treated at its facilities at both the Hillman Cancer Center location in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh and at UPMC-affiliated sites throughout Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, and overseas locations. Founded in 1984, Hillman became the youngest cancer center in history to achieve NCI-designation. As of 2007, Hillman had received nearly $200 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Devra Davis
Devra Lee Davis (born June 7, 1946) is an American epidemiologist, toxicologist, and author of three books about environmental hazards. She was founding director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, and is a former professor of epidemiology at University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. She has served on several governmental and non-governmental organizations, conducting research and advocacy into effects of pesticides, asbestos, and wireless radiation on human health, especially cancers. Davis is the founder and president of the Environmental Health Trust, a non-profit organization which argues that mobile devices, WiFi, 5G, and other radio-frequency systems pose a health risk to humans and the environment. She has been called a "crusader in the fight over cell phone safety" and believes that radio frequencies could cause cancer. Such claims have been criticized by experts as being bereft of credible argument ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
