os Angeles, 26 July 1943. At the height of a long, hot and hazy summer, a thick, alien fog descends downtown, stinging the eyes of Angelenos and making their noses stream. The second world war is raging, and the panicked population brace themselves for a chemical attack. But in fact, this is a visual manifestation of what will come to be understood as air pollution.
It was the tipping point, the first sight of smog in LA. The result of an unprecedented influx of newcomers to an already populated city, located at the bottom of a valley with little breeze, which was at the time the world’s biggest market for motor vehicles.
Almost 80 years on, we don’t need apocalyptic scenes to alert us to the threat – we’ve lived with it. Ask any inner-city child of the ’80s, pre-congestion charge and pre-diesel filters, and they know what engine fumes smell and taste like. We’re more than clued-up now, and the air is cleaner in many parts of the country than it was (according to government data, since 2011 there has been an overall decrease in the number of days with moderate or higher pollution in urban areas, although the picture is very different in rural areas). But experts claim air pollution is still having a damaging effect on our bodies and, as we are just beginning to understand, our minds.