Killer London Smog of 1952

Fifty years ago, a poisonous mix of dense fog and black coal soot killed thousands of Londoners in four days

In the age of information, it's nothing short of astounding that one of the deadliest "environmental" events in history is almost unheard of today. And it took place only 54 years ago.

In December of 1954, a toxic smog fell over London, England, at that time the most populous city in Europe. Depending on whom is doing the analysis, anywhere from 4 thousand to 12 thousand citizens died as a result. At its worst, visibility in London was reduced to one foot. Bad visibilty in and of itself won't kill you unless you're clumsy and reckless. The problem with this smog is that it contained sulphur dioxide, hydrochloric acid, fluorine compounds and other poisons.

Roads were littered with abandoned cars. Midday concerts were cancelled due to total darkness. Archivists at the British Museum found smog lurking in the book stacks. Cattle in the city's Smithfield market were killed and discarded because they were unsaleable -- their lungs were black.

The causes of the killer smog were a combination of natural and man-made. However, it was humans that created both the lethal component and the coverup that followed. This condition is consistent with one of the primary principles of the Catastrophe Map worldview: the authorities who are ostensibly charged with protecting the populace virtually always support power and profit over human life, health and well-being.

SCIENCE CORNER:

The killer fog was produced by the condensation of water on the 2,000 tons of sulfur dioxide and pollutants produced daily by coal-burning industrial furnaces and home heating systems in the city. A high-pressure system moved over Britain, bringing dry air, cold temperatures, and light winds. During the night, the winds stopped and the Thames River basin experienced a severe temperature inversion, trapping cold air near the ground beneath a warm humid air layer, causing heavy fog to form. For the next four days, tons of particulate matter from the furnaces entered this air mass, turning the sky yellow, amber, brown, and finally almost black.

The air consequently became a blinding, suffocating cloud of gas that choked breathing passages and stung eyes with enough acidity to cause skin irritation. Cars were stopped in the roads as visibility dropped to a few feet. Smog-air poured through window cracks and under doorways to permeate homes and buildings like something out of a science fiction movie.

For more on this Hall of Fame event, buy this book.

This event was preceded by another unknown killer fog in Donora, PA.

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GOVERNMENT RESPONSE

Selective memory has obscurred the fact that government complicity in the killer smoke episode began well before the event itself. There is ample evidence that permissive zoning for central London caol fired power stations and factories was a key factor in the degree of concentrated pollutants in the areain, enabled by Parliament and usual vested interests. Surviving maps show concentric rings of pollution radiating from Battersea and Bankside Power stations in Central London, and the Tate Sugar Mill in East London. Large scale environmental protests echoed those that took place during the building the first Battersea power station further down the river in 1922, but Parliament ignored these environmental protests as well, and allowed smoke stack industry to colonise the most densely populated city in Europe with chimneys.

After the fog, the London government staked out two positions: that the victims had died of the flu, and that the Londoners themselves had poisoned themselves with their home stoves. There is some truth to the last statement, but it ignores the huge concentrations of sulphur dioxide near the 28 coal fired power plants. The government also applied an arbitrary limit on lingering deaths, to reduce the massive casualty count to "only" 4000. Nevertheless, new regulations were put in place restricting the use of dirty fuels in industry and banning black smoke. These included the Clean Air Acts of 1956 and of 1968, and the City of London (Various Powers) Act of 1954.