Stan Galat posted:
When I was a kid, LA used be be nearly uninhabitable during an inversion.
I hated the SCAQMD when I was a teenager and had to get my car smogged. The process in those days was a bureaucratic mess. But, now I see the wisdom of the laws, even if imperfect at the time. My children do not have to deal with the smog like I did, and I am grateful. I don't think folks really understand what the smog was like for kids. We would get home from surfing, and have to stay as still as we could so that we would breathe as little as possible because it hurt and felt so awful. Any activity which required deep breaths came with a penalty later on.
The US has not been this pristine since before white people lived here.
Depending upon who you read, it appears that the Southern Sierra Miwok, who inhabited Yosemite Valley, used large fire for crop management which resulted in smog. Not just haze, dust and moisture, but chemical laden smog.