Though we now see large cities across Southern and Eastern Asia as living with unbearable pollution, we forget that we experienced similar levels of pollution in the United States. In LA in WWII, the brown-colored smog grew so dense, people thought that Japanese had attacked them with chemicals. Many people who grew up there reported that it "hurt to breathe" and would get teary eyes on bad days. It was hard to get air pollution legislation in California and the U. S. Because the car industry didn’t want to be blamed and people were scared that new catalytic converters that removed [pollutant] from emissions would make cars too expensive. (Plus people didn’t understand the connection because auto emissions were clear and the smog was brown. ) Haagen-Smit, a biologist studying the flavor of pineapples, found the connection. But, the oil and automobile industries funded the Stanford Research Institute to discredit Haagen-Smit. At one point, someone offered to disprove Haagen-Smit’s findings by voluntarily sitting in his plexiglass smog chamber. This person got bronchitis. Haagen-Smit continued his research so that by the 1950’s the connection was clear. Activists groups sprang up and clamored for pollution control legislation. From this and other pollution crises, the Clean Air Act was born
