Picture it: July 8, 1943, Los Angeles, California. You go outside and are inundated by a mysterious brown haze in the air that smells gaseous. This is unprecedented, and nobody knows what could be ...

This story is free to read because readers choose to support LAist. If you find value in independent local reporting, make a donation to power our newsroom today. Los Angeles this month marked an ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Windows down, gas mask on. Sera Segal-Alsberg brought out the heavy duty protection during an L.A. smog alert in June 1979. (Boris ...

As a child growing up in Southern California, Ann Carlson remembers mountains obscured by haze and yellowish brown air that stung her eyes and made her lungs ache. It was just “the environment,” her ...

The Los Angeles region has some of the most polluted air in the United States, failing to meet standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency for the last decade. Now, Caltech researchers have ...

Eighty years ago, the enchantment ended. Los Angeles, that magical realm of shimmering natural beauty, was befouled by smog — maybe forever. The mayor, Fletcher Bowron, told Angelenos in 1944 to lower ...

The word “smog” appeared, lightheartedly, in a Santa Cruz newspaper in 1880, sizing up London’s smoke and fog blend: “as unwholesome as it is unpleasant.” Within a few decades, Los Angeles had taken ...

New household water heaters and heating systems powered by natural gas would be phased out in the Los Angeles basin under two controversial rules that air quality regulators will vote on Friday.