SEER Essentials: Clean Air Act Basics - History of the Clean Air Act

Environmental Law Explored: A Podcast SEERies

In this episode Dr. Devra Davis and moderator Matt Oakes discuss historic events that led to the development of the first federal Clean Air Act.

Dr. Devra Davis joins moderator Matt Oakes to discuss the history of major air inversion events that led to smog clouds that killed many Americans in the middle part of the 20th Century. These inversion events combined with other factors to general momentum for development of the wide-scale federal air regulation. Dr. Davis was Founding Director, Center for Environmental Oncology, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, and Professor of Epidemiology at the Graduate School of Public Health (2004-2010). She has also served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the London School of Hygiene (2002-03) and Tropical Medicine, and at the Yeshiva University, New York (1995-96), and as a Visiting Professor at Mt.Sinai School of Medicine (1983-2010), Oberlin College (2000-2001) and Carnegie Mellon University (1999-2004). She is the founder of Environmental Health Trust in Teton County, Wyoming, a group that provides research and education about environmental health hazards. Dr. Davis is currently Visiting Professor of Medicine at The Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem, Israel, and Ondokuz Mayis University Medical School, Samsun, Turkey. She has authored three books and hundreds of other publications, including When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution (2002, Basic Books), a National Book Award Finalist.