toxicity and politics

New Jersey, 1972. photo: National Archives

A few months back we posted an appreciation of Richard Nixon's environmental record, which included signing the 1970 Clean Air Act. The National Archives just digitized a huge collection of images from the Documerica project (1971-72), which documented the state of our natural and built environments at the outset of this and other pioneering legislation (Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and so on). It is amazing to see how badly polluted the country was forty years ago, and, conversely, how far we've come.