Killer Fog and the Anticyclone

[DuckforcoveR]

London, 1952.

An anticyclone settled over the region, an invisible killer in waiting was already laying in wait for the unsuspecting people of London. Normally, this weather phenomenon would bring only what would be considered an "unusual cold streak". Being December, how "unusual" this may have seemed is up for debate. Historical Data shows that London was indeed much cooler in the days leading up to the Killer Event, but not being from London I don't know if anybody would've noticed?



 

But as the temperatures dipped, the people did what they could to keep warm: Put more coal on the fires. Unfortunately, the very act of burning coal as the temperature dropped to keep warm ended up killing more people than a chilly week in December ever would have. Of course, it wasn't just the everyday citizen burning coal that caused the disaster, it was a mixture of private and industrial pollutants that combined to terrorize the city.

Among the pollutants emitted on each day of the smog were: 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, 140 tonnes of hydrochloric acid, 14 tonnes of fluorine compounds. Worst of all, 370 tonnes of sulphur dioxide were converted into 800 tonnes of sulphuric acid within the smog.

Killer Smog

So as the fires were burning to fuel industry and comfort, the anti-cyclone and its deadly grip began to choke the city and her inhabitants little by little. It had to seem almost "fun" at first, the same way I feel in the morning when heavy fog covers the city. Other than the driving part I absolutely love it (and the little ones do as well). The city didn't come to a stop, but it did slow to a crawl.







1952 London Photos

But as the inconvenience of guiding double decker busses by candle flare passed, the city was literally chocking on its own breath. Little by little it started to become clear that this wasn't a regular fog / smog event. This was catastrophe in the making. So on December 9th, 1952 the smog cleared, but people soon realized the damage was already done. The ticking time bomb in the lungs of the people and animals slowly ticked down to zero.

The Aftermath

A change in weather meant that the smog finally dispersed on Tuesday, December 9. A government report which followed stated that at least 4,000 people had died as a consequence of respiratory problems it caused, with another 100,000 people affected; more modern research put the death toll at closer to 12,000.

More Aftermath



When the smoke cleared and casualties were counted, London turned to legislation to try and prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again. It was a slow process, you don't change every lightbulb in a city or country overnight.

A series of laws were brought in to avoid a repeat of the situation. This included the Clean Air Acts of 1956 and 1968. These acts banned emissions of black smoke and decreed residents of urban areas and operators of factories must convert to smokeless fuels.

People were given time to adapt to the new rules, however, and fogs continued to be smoky for some time after the Act of 1956 was passed. In 1962, for example, 750 Londoners died as a result of a fog, but nothing on the scale of the 1952 Great Smog has ever occurred again. This kind of smog has now become a thing of the past, thanks partly to pollution legislation and also to modern developments, such as the widespread use of central heating.

So the moral here (for me at least) is legislation isn't always a bad thing. But it's also clear that legislation didn't solve the problem. The new laws enacted played a smaller role next to the innovation of private and industrial heating which lowered emissions around the world. I think we can all learn a little bit from this. The laws may have sped up the process of innovation but tragedy combined with human ingenuity played a bigger role.


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