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Oreo Teeth

@skyfaller I grew up not far from the Lehigh Valley Velodrome. I can remember some of the cyclists wearing either balaclavas or masks in smog season. Most didn't but nobody seemed to care about people who chose to protect themselves from particulates back then.

4 comments
Nelson Chu Pavlosky

@oreoteeth When was smog season back then? I assume summer because of heat domes and similar weather phenomena, but I suppose it could also be related to some local industrial process with some other logic to it. Was it regular and predictable? Do you remember smog season not being a thing anymore at some point?

Oreo Teeth

@skyfaller July and August for the most part in the 70s and early 80s. The radio station with all the weather gadgets that used to do the local measurement was bought out somewhere around the mid 80s when I was at college. So I can't say if the air quality improved or not. It was just that people stopped checking it.

Nelson Chu Pavlosky

@oreoteeth Then would you say that it's odd they're still wearing masks in November, then? Would this have been after smog season?

Are they wearing the masks to make a point about how increasing bicycle use would reduce smog, rather than for practical reasons because it was actually smoggy that day?

This post has a pic of a 1977 protest, could be the same one? Nobody is wearing a mask because they are singing, although one man to the right has a mask under his chin: bicyclecoalition.org/launching

@oreoteeth Then would you say that it's odd they're still wearing masks in November, then? Would this have been after smog season?

Are they wearing the masks to make a point about how increasing bicycle use would reduce smog, rather than for practical reasons because it was actually smoggy that day?

Oreo Teeth

@skyfaller Well, we do get those freakishly warm fall days sometimes. It's def possible that there are smog days in the spring or fall. I mostly went to the Velodrome on summer nights. Couldn't say if LV cyclists were still masking in the fall.

And of course it's also possible that local industry smokestacks were pumping out more pollution than normal on that particular day.

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