“For decades, pollution was created by very powerful industries, and the state investigations were very friendly to industry,” says Leif Fredrickson, a UVA historian and a member of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. “So [the people of Donora] were rightly concerned about that and wanted the federal government to get involved. But as it turns out, the Public Health Service was pretty concerned about their relationship with state researchers, and this is before the federal government had much say over what happens in terms of pollution control in state and local areas.”