Donora Smog Museum features a collection of archival materials documenting the Donora Smog of 1948

Donora Smog of 1948

The 1948 Donora smog was a historic air inversion resulting in a wall of smog that killed 20 people and sickened 7,000 more in Donora, Pennsylvania, a mill town on the Monongahela River, southeast of Pittsburgh.-The incident:...

, an air inversion of smog

Smog

Smog is a type of air pollution; the word "smog" is a portmanteau of smoke and fog. Modern smog is a type of air pollution derived from vehicular emission from internal combustion engines and industrial fumes that react in the atmosphere with sunlight to form secondary pollutants that also combine...

 containing fluorine

Fluorine

Fluorine is the chemical element with atomic number 9, represented by the symbol F. It is the lightest element of the halogen column of the periodic table and has a single stable isotope, fluorine-19. At standard pressure and temperature, fluorine is a pale yellow gas composed of diatomic...

 that killed 20 people in Donora

Donora, Pennsylvania

Donora is a borough in Washington County, Pennsylvania, south of Pittsburgh on the Monongahela river. Donora was incorporated in 1901. Donora got its name from a combination of William Donner and Nora Mellon, banker Andrew W. Mellon's wife. Agriculture, coal-mining, steel-making, wire-making, and...

, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, a mill town 20 miles south of Pittsburgh on the Monongahela River

Monongahela River

The Monongahela River is a river on the Allegheny Plateau in north-central West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania in the United States...

.

Donora was home to U.S. Steel

U.S. Steel

The United States Steel Corporation , more commonly known as U.S. Steel, is an integrated steel producer with major production operations in the United States, Canada, and Central Europe. The company is the world's tenth largest steel producer ranked by sales...

's Donora Zinc Works and its American Steel & Wire plant. The event is sometimes credited for initiating the clean-air movement in the United States, whose crowning achievement was the Clean Air Act

Clean Air Act

A Clean Air Act is one of a number of pieces of legislation relating to the reduction of airborne contaminants, smog and air pollution in general. The use by governments to enforce clean air standards has contributed to an improvement in human health and longer life spans...

.

The museum, which opened October 20, 2008, is located at 595 McKean Avenue near Sixth Street in an old storefront.

The museum has partnered with California University of Pennsylvania

California University of Pennsylvania

California University of Pennsylvania is a public university located in California, Pennsylvania, USA. Founded in 1852, it is a member of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. Cal U's enrollment is approximately 9,400.The main campus consists of about 38 buildings situated on 92 acres...

to develop a digital collection of primary sources that are archived on site.

External links

• Donora Smog Commemorative Committee
• The Donora Digital Collection
• Powerpoint slideshow of sample primary sources archived at the Donora Smog Museum.