There was a time years ago when Farrell, based on its poor air quality, was considered to be one of the most polluted cities in the country.

But as bad as the air was in the Shenango Valley during the golden era of steel, Sharon Steel Corp. and other area manufacturers never came close to delivering the polluted-infested bomb the Donora Zinc Works dropped on the community of Donora, Pa., Washington County, in 1948.

During a five-day span in October of that year, 20 people died and more than one-third of the town's population became ill or were hospitalized during a smog emergency that blanketed the area with a choking, black smoke.

The story of the Donora disaster is among those told by Dr. Devra Lee Davis in her book, "When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution." The book is a finalist for the 2002 National Book Award.

For Dr. Davis, a Donora native, the story is quite personal because several members of her family were among those who died as a direct result of the smog.

She was at Thiel College on Monday for a public lecture and book signing in the Howard Miller Student Center's Lutheran Heritage Room to help kick off the school's Earth Week 2003 festivities. Earth Day is Tuesday.

More than 50 people, including Thiel students and faculty members, attended the lecture in which Dr. Davis spoke on her book as well as other environmental issues.

Dr. Davis is a visiting professor of public policy at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School and a senior advisor to the World Health Organization. She is also a world-renowned epidemiologist and researcher on the environmental causes of breast cancer and chronic disease.

"Growing up in Donora, no one ever talked about the town being polluted," Dr. Davis said.

She said it wasn't until she attended the University of Pittsburgh that she began to become aware of how others perceived the dirty air in Donora, which overlooks the Monongahela River.

"I came home one day and said, 'Mom, was there another town called Donora?' " Dr. Davis said, because the one she knew "wasn't polluted."

Growing up in Donora, Dr. Davis said it was easy to get used to the smell that floated from the zinc work's five 115-foot smokestacks and wound its way into every nook and cranny of every home. Visitors to the blue collar community, however, would often ask what the smell was, she recalled.

And "my grandpa would always say, 'It smells like money!' "

It was, perhaps, that mindset that enabled the zinc works' smokestacks to continue to billow smoke into the community, eventually setting the stage for the 1948 disaster which, according to Dr. Davis, was aided by an "air inversion" that in effect created an invisible ceiling that kept the smoke from escaping the Mon Valley.

Just how dense that smog got was revealed during what some call "The greatest game never seen," which featured football teams from Donora and Monongahela high schools.

One Donora player, on a previously broadcast WQED television special that Dr. Davis showed at the beginning of her lecture, said he recalled lining up for the kickoff that Friday night -- Dr. Davis said nothing "could interrupt a game" in her football-crazed town -- and not being able to see 20 yards away.

The Donora disaster, as much as any other Dr. Davis said, got the attention of public officials and helped lead to updated clean air laws, although it wasn't until Dec. 31, 1970, that President Nixon signed the Clean Air Act.

"He wasn't personally too concerned about the environment," she said of Nixon. "He used to burn logs in the White House -- he loved that homey feel -- in the summer and so then turned up the air conditioning. To give a personal commitment to all these things wasn't his intent, but he was a political genius who understood that the environment was an issue that he had to get on top of."

Nixon did get on top of it, Dr. Davis said, by appointing fellow Californian Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"That appointment created the environmental movement," she said. "And while you might not understand why and how, I don't think the California Republicans have ever been given full credit for what they did. And in my book I think it's important to do that."

Dr. Davis said what also is important is to get a dialogue started on alternative fuel sources and our country's reliance on carbon-based products and foreign oil, especially in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Those types of fossil fuels, she said, are dealing a sort of double-jeopardy to the planet by worsening air pollution and leading to an increase of greenhouse gases.

"It's illusory to simply think of air pollution as a local problem," she said.

What Dr. Davis ultimately hopes to see worldwide is a coming together of the left and right, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, and even democracies and communist countries.

"There are no more idealogical environmentalists," Dr. Davis said. "This isn't an issue of the right and left. This is an issue where we have one planet; we figured that out. The tragedies of space exploration have made it very clear that we're not going to have another one to go to for a long time. And what we're doing to this one right now is problematic."

You can e-mail Herald Staff Writer Jeff Greenburg at jgreenburg@sharonherald.com.