Abstract
In a report on Pittsburgh’s “smoke nuisance” in the early 20th century, academic researchers attempted to calculate the economic burden caused by the city’s air pollution. They found that Pittsburghers, in their ongoing battle against soot, spent more on replacing curtains, refreshing wallpaper, and repainting homes than residents of cleaner cities. To keep the grime off their clothes, they also made more trips to laundries and dry cleaners, making Pittsburgh, in the eyes of a writer in 1913, “the greatest laundry town in the country.”
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