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Mary Amdur's remarkable story of research ethics

02/17/2023
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Left: Mary Amdor. Middle: The deadly fog in Donora, Pennsylvania. Right: Woman walking through the fog in Donora. 

In late October of 1948, a combination of temperature fluctuations and deadly emissions from two U.S. Steel plants created a dense, yellow fog that hung over the city of Donora, Pennsylvania, killing 70 people and injuring 6,000 others. The fog, which contained sulfuric acid, nitrogen dioxide, fluorine, and other poisonous gases, remained in the city for several days until it rained on October 31st. Doctors and firefighters shared bottled oxygen with Donora residents and urged those with pre-existing lung and breathing issues to leave, but the density of the fog made driving and transportation nearly impossible.

Dr. Mary Amdur, a biochemist with a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh, was recruited soon after to research the role that American Smelting and Refining Company (AS&R) emissions played in the casualties observed in Donora. AS&R wanted to prove that their emissions had a minimal effect on the deaths and injuries incurred, and they even requested that Dr. Amdur not study one of the gases released into the atmosphere. Dr. Amdur's research instead indicated that citizens of Donora were injured and killed as a direct result of the gases released: "She had demonstrated the irritancy potential of sulfur dioxide and its ability to interact with water-soluble metal salts to further oxidize the sulfur in the particle, which travels to the deep lung, where its potential for irritation would be magnified" (Mary O. Amdur, Oxford Academic). Dr. Amdur gained and lost funding multiple times because her research interfered with the interests of AS&R, which she didn't accommodate into her research. Additionally, she wasn't able to rise above the title of "associate professor" at the different universities where she worked.

For her work and her strength to stick to her own ethical principles, Dr. Mary Amdur became known as the "mother of air pollution toxicology." And in 1961, the United States adopted the Clean Air Act, which "regulates air emissions from stationary and mobile sources," in order to prevent dangerous air pollution events like Donora's. (Summary of the Clean Air Act). 

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Publication info: By Yael Danieli & Robert L Dingman. Routledge, 2014.

Location: Academic eBook Collection.

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Title: September 11: Trauma and Human Bonds

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Dr. Charles Henry Turner & his bees
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Watch these videos for more insight to Charles Henry Turner's life:  

 


Charles Henry Turner taught high school and college science classes for over 30 years. During this time, he studied insect behavior using his background in biology and psychology. Turner's work changed the way that insect behavior was understood and studied. This quote from Encyclopedia Britannica summarizes this change well: "[in the early 1900s], the study of insect behaviour was dominated by 19th-century concepts of taxis and kinesis, in which social insects are seen to alter their behaviour in specific responses to specific stimuli. Through his observations Turner was able to establish that insects can modify their behaviour as a result of experience."

More on the specific contributions Dr. Turner made to insect behavior research: "During his 33-year career, Turner published more than 70 papers, many of them written while he confronted numerous challenges, including restrictions on his access to laboratories and research libraries and restrictions on his time due to a heavy teaching load at Sumner [High School]. Furthermore, Turner received meagre pay and was not given the opportunity to train research students at either the undergraduate or the graduate level. Despite these challenges, he published several morphological studies of vertebrates and invertebrates. Turner also designed apparatuses (such as mazes for ants and cockroaches and coloured disks and boxes for testing the visual abilities of honeybees), conducted naturalistic observations, and performed experiments on insect navigation, death feigning, and basic problems in invertebrate learning...He developed novel procedures to study pattern and colour recognition in honeybees (Apis), and he discovered that cockroaches trained to avoid a dark chamber in one apparatus retained the behaviour when transferred to a differently shaped apparatus" (Encyclopedia Britannica). 

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