Andra Chastain, assistant professor of history, has received a Fulbright-Garcia Robles award to study in Mexico during the 2025/26 academic year. Chastain, who becomes an associate professor in August, will examine the social and cultural history of air pollution in three cities in the Americas—Mexico City; Santiago, Chile; and Los Angeles. She will be affiliated with the Institute of Historical Research, part of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (known as UNAM, its Spanish acronym).
Chastain plans to focus primarily on how people perceive air pollution and what it takes for experts and the government to consider it a public health crisis. She will concentrate on the second half of the 20th century, “when the hazards of contaminated air could be smelled, seen and felt,” she said.
Air pollution is “a diffuse problem,” Chastain said. “The air is all around us, so you get used to it. When does that become not natural anymore?”
The three cities share several traits. They are all surrounded by mountains, so that the air does not disperse easily. They have arid or semi-arid climates, with little rain to clean pollutants from the sky. And they are sunny, the intense sunlight combining with vehicle exhaust to produce smog. Los Angeles had the worst air quality in the United States starting in the 1940s. Mexico City and Santiago were among the most polluted cities in the world in the 1980s and 1990s.
Over time, those places learned to balance the competing challenges of economic growth and environmental protection, with stronger pollution control measures, and other urban areas experiencing rapid development rose to the top of most-polluted cities lists. Chastain’s research will lead to a proposal for a book, tentatively titled “Urban Air: A History of Smog in the Americas,” which, she said, may be instructive for places facing similar challenges. She wants to answer the question: “How does scientific knowledge of a problem get translated to wider-spread public awareness of something that needs to change?”
As a study of urban transportation, Chastain’s previous research, on Santiago’s metro system, also related to the environment. That work became her dissertation, earning her a Ph.D. from Yale University in 2018; and a book, “Chile Underground: The Santiago Metro and the Struggle for a Rational City,” published by Yale University Press in 2024.
Chastain’s Fulbright year in Mexico will also benefit her teaching at WSU Vancouver, she said. She expects that it will prepare her to offer new courses, revamp existing courses and potentially develop a future study-abroad program bringing WSU students to Mexico.
Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 400,000 talented and accomplished students, scholars, teachers, artists and professionals with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research abroad. Fulbrighters exchange ideas, build people-to-people connections and work to address complex global challenges.
Fulbright is a program of the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the program, which operates in more than 160 countries worldwide.