What do killer smog and wireless technology have in common?

Electromagnetic smog still an unrecognized, deadly pollutant.

The Donora wire mill (which later became part of the American Steel & Wire Company) on the banks of the Monongahela River in 1910. Library of Congress

Little fanfare commemorates the 74th anniversary of the Donora killer smog that hit my southwestern Pennsylvania hometown in October of 1948. As fall settled over that small working-class steel town, toxic, pungent, yellow-gray coal, coke and zinc fumes morphed into a deadly airborne soup that settled along the Monongahela Valley. In five days, twenty people suddenly dropped dead.

An even more lethal smog in London that killed twelve thousand four years later made the reality of air pollution impacts on human health undeniable. This set the stage for the global effort to reduce air pollution that is ongoing to this day. While the massive levels of noxious factory fumes that killed people years ago in Donora and London are no longer a problem in those areas, forest fires and industrial effluents are providing new and menacing forms of sullied air around the world today.

And there is another type of invisible, tasteless and odorless form of air pollution confronting the…