Did Air Pollutions Kill the Kennedys?

The air tragedy that claimed the life of John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife and her sister, last July may have been the result of industrial air pollution that obscured Kennedy's destination in a nearly opaque haze. According to Atmospheric Chemist Joseph Prospero, director of the University of Miami's Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies, "High concentrations of visibility-reducing aerosols were the cause of the crash that killed Kennedy and his passengers."

Prospero, who has spent 30 years analyzing the movement of airborne pollution, believes that the widely reported "haze" that enveloped Kennedy's Piper Saratoga originated in industrial smokestacks and exhaust pipes as far west as Ohio.

A report in the Miami Herald reveals that computer models of Atlantic coast weather the night of the crash "showed maximum concentrations of tiny particles of pollution known as aerosols ... directly over the waters around Martha's Vineyard." In addition, data from US satellites "showed a sharply defined band of very high particle concentrations in the same area."

"There's a path that transports pollutants that runs across the New England states," Prospero told the Herald, adding that "heavy pulse came out that weekend."

On September 9, nearly two months after the crash, the EPA reported that "air quality this summer for Eastern cities has been among the worst in the 1990s."

Prospero determined that aerosol concentrations at the time of the accident peaked at 3,000 feet. This may explain why Kennedy, after descending from 5,600 feet suddenly took the plane back up to 2,300 feet. The dense bank of dirty air would have made both the airport and the horizon completely invisible.

Prospero speculates that the severe pollution-induced haze "disoriented [Kennedy] in the final moments of his flight." "We have come to accept pollution haze and poor visibility as a normal feature of our environment," Prospero observed. "We tend to think of decreased visibility only in terms of a loss in aesthetic values. The Kennedy tragedy shows that there is another cost: Pollution can kill."