As I remember it — The Start of the Clean Air Council
I’ve been a Clean Air Council member since the nonprofit first began to fight for everyone’s right to breathe clean air. On a steamy late August day in the summer of 1967, I arrived at the University of Pennsylvania to start my graduate degree program in “Operations Research”. I had been accepted as a dorm proctor in the Upper Class Triangle Dorms at 37th and Spruce Streets and assigned a single dorm on the second floor, which had a screened window that looked out the back to a walkway. I had bought an Inquirer newspaper at a coin newspaper box and dropped the paper on the window sill, which was open to allow for a breeze.
After unpacking and traveling around campus to run my many errands, I returned late that afternoon exhausted and ready to eat my hoagie and read the Inky. I picked up the paper on the window sill and was astonished to see the black newsprint on the front page slide right off the page! This illusion was caused by a layer of fine black soot, likely air particulate matter, in the air that deposited through the window screen over roughly 5 hours and landed on the newspaper. I was astounded and concerned that I had been breathing this same air all day!
Black soot and fine particulate matter is a public health problem that kills millions of people each year. As someone concerned about air quality and the environment, I was a regular contributor and member of the American Lung Association. I learned they had initiated another independent health group to promote clean air. The group would work to fight air pollution in the Philadelphia area. This was before the first Earth Day and before national legislation such as the Clean Air Act was passed.
They invited the public to attend the first meeting. Given my concern for the sooty air I was breathing since moving into the city, I made it a point to be at this meeting.
The meeting had about 25 attendees. The meeting chair was from the Lung Association of Chester County. The Chair specifically noted they were not turning on the overhead fluorescent lights and only using the ambient light from the windows and the room was not air conditioned but it felt quite comfortable. There were two brothers, one a professor in communications at Temple, the other a well known Philadelphia personality/news host for a major local TV channel. It was the latter who was initially chosen to lead this new group called the Clean Air Council.
I’m proud to be a Clean Air Council member 54 years later and contribute to defending everyone’s right to a healthy environment.
By longtime Clean Air Council member, James Castellan.
