Word: topsoil
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...curve of smog concentrations matched the curve of deaths from heart and respiratory disease. Each day the center receives filters, coated with air pollutants collected by the same process in 23 other U.S. cities, for analysis and comparison. Right now, the Fort Worth filters are tan from wind-borne topsoil. Those from Detroit and Los Angeles show that, at rush hours, the lead content from automobile exhausts is near the limit of human tolerance...
...between the Red River and the weakly trickling Rio Grande, has gotten less than 10% of normal rainfall for four years; southwestern Oklahoma has gotten little more, and areas of Colorado, Kansas, Arizona and New Mexico have suffered dangerous drought. In all of them last week, not only the topsoil but the subsoil was parched deep down...
...over Chicago turned an eerie shade of yellow-brown one afternoon last week, and a menacing twilight fell over the Loop-powdery topsoil, blown in from the Great Plains, was drifting once more in the upper atmosphere. It was a fearful reminder that the flatlands of the midcontinent, which had a green and healing decade of rain in the 19405, are dry again. This spring dust storms such as have not been seen since the "black blizzards" of the 19303 are blowing in the Southwest, in western Kansas, in areas of Nebraska, Missouri, Wyoming and Colorado...
...this year's winds-far stronger than the winds of the 19303. Week after week gales of 60, 70 and 80 miles an hour scourged the earth. In the Oklahoma panhandle alone there were 499,000 acres of land that either I) lost at least one inch of topsoil, or 2) been covered with from one to two inches of windblown dust and sand...
When the settlers cleared New England forests 300 years ago. the A-horizon (topsoil) that they found was only two to three inches thick (Iowa topsoil formed under permanent grass is often 18 inches thick). Below this was sterile subsoil, and when the plow mixed the two together, the blend was low in nearly everything that a good soil should have. It was not the lavish virgin soil of popular fancy...