Bad Air Over Birmingham

For years specialists in Birmingham have been giving patients with lung diseases this grim advice: "Leave the city or die." The air is among the worst in the U.S. even on good days, but last week really dramatized the reason for the doctors' concern. On Monday night an atmospheric inversion settled over the city. The sky turned reddish-brown, as clouds of ash, soot, and foundry dust produced by the city's factories were trapped beneath. By Tuesday, the pollution level had risen to 771 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic meter of air, nearly four times the level considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Principal source of Birmingham's smog is a clutch of 23 heavy-industry companies (including U.S. Steel and Republic Steel), whose smokestacks spew out tons of sooty particles each day. Last April, when a similar temperature inversion occurred, most of the companies ignored requests from local health authorities and the EPA to cut back production, and held out until a shift in the weather blew the problem away.

This time the EPA did not wait for the weather to change. It asked U.S. District Court Judge Sam C. Pointer Jr. to order the 23 companies to shut down or drastically cut back production. The judge did just that. It was the first such order obtained under the emergency powers given the EPA by the 1970 Clean Air Act. Compliance was good if somewhat reluctant. Though by week's end a light wind and rain cleared the smog and the injunction was lifted, the order was an earnest of more injunctions to come.

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