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Chain of events. Cause and effect. We
analyse what went right, and what went
wrong, as we discover that many outcomes
can be predicted, planned for and even
prevented. I'm John Chidgey, and this is
Causality. Causality is part of The
Engineered Network to support our shows
including this one, head over to our
Patreon page and for other great shows
visit https://engineered.network/ today. "The
Fog" In 1952 for 5 days in London
England experienced what has been
referred to as the killer fog. The great
smog of London, the big smoke or simply
The Fog. Since London's settlement and
often romanticised in the novels of Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle as Sherlock Holmes
would make chase during foggy London
evenings, London has suffered from
regular, thick heavy fogs. Many of the
heaviest fogs were caused by the local
topography in conjunction with
semi-regular anti-cyclones that
inevitably led to temperature inversions.
During temperature inversions a pocket
of air is contained within another and
are characterized by stagnant air masses
that are colder than usual...air
being trapped at the ground level. Such a
temperature inversion formed in the
London area
during Thursday the 4th of December, 1952.
At 3:00pm the fog began to form
noticeably and workers at the dockyards,
with crane operators perched high above
the ground, reported by 4:00pm that
afternoon, that they could no longer make
visual contact with the workers at
ground level and works on the docks were
abandoned for the day at that point. The
worst of the fog hit in the early hours
of the morning of Friday the 5th of
December, 1952. Visibility had decreased
further until it reached a recorded
minimum of only 3ft, just under 1m.
All primary forms of
transportation were cancelled.
There are no buses on the roads and no
trains above the ground,
although the London Underground subway
service did continue to operate. Those
that were game enough to drive, had to do
so by poking their heads out of the side
door window, because the fog had left a
slick on the windscreen that distorted
what little visibility there was and
that could not be cleared effectively by
their windscreen wipers, leaving nothing
more than a smudged slick on the
windscreen. Ambulances were unable to
retrieve the increasing number of people
that had succumbed to the conditions. And
most sick people had to make their way
on foot as best they could to nearby
hospitals. Some ambulances did make it
through the fog, but they did so with a
person leading the way through the fog
ahead of the ambulance, holding a bright
burning torch above their heads to show
them a safe path. The smog seeped into
buildings and in a particular large areas of
buildings like theaters and auditoriums
caused most shows to be cancelled due to
poor visibility indoors of the stage or
the screen. People began to notice a grey
film forming on surfaces indoors as the
day's progressed in the fog. The fog was
reported to have an acrid stinking
acidic taste and smell. It was warm to
the skin. Some reporting that it felt
like a warm soft blanket. At night the
street lighting was unable to penetrate
the fog to even reach eye-height, let alone
ground level. Many people that had lived
through the blackouts of World War 2
years earlier during the Blitz,
commented that the nights had been
blacker than the blackouts
of the war. The fog finally lifted
Tuesday the 9th of December, 1952 lasting
a total of 5 days. However on the 8th of
December the government had already
recorded almost 4,000
deaths as a direct result of the smog,
with 100,000 reporting respiratory
distress. Shortly after the incident
Harold McMillan the Minister of Housing
and Local Government and later Prime
Minister of the United Kingdom, was
insistent that had been a wholly natural
disaster for which nothing could have
been done to prevent it. Many Londoners
had come to accept fogs in their City
and this incident was the final straw.
Most didn't and couldn't believe the
official position and rejected that
nothing could have been done. So what
caused so many people to die? Sulfuric
Acid particles were formed when Sulfur
Dioxide combined with Nitrogen Dioxide
in the water droplets of the fog. It
became concentrated when the water
particles evaporated during daily cycle,
producing a mist of airborne acidic-oily
particles. The acid when breathed in
irritated, burned and inflamed
animal tissues and the oil made it
extremely difficult to remove. The
majority of deaths stemmed from Hypoxia,
most commonly referred to as suffocation,
as a result of 2 primary factors. The
first was excessive pus and mucus
production from lung infections caused
by breathing in smog particles. The
second, swelling of the primary and
secondary airways to the lungs causing
irritation from breathing in the fog. The
acids in the fog caused chemical burns
in the lungs, alveoli and bronchi, leading
to an immune response which in many
cases escalated into Bronchial Pneumonia
and Purulent Bronchitis. It's true that
many of those that died in the disaster
were those that were immunologically
exposed, the young and the elderly and in
some cases some with pre-existing
respiratory conditions. So now we know
why it caused so many people to die. What
caused the fog in the first place? We
have to go back to the beginning...for
London at least. Many started by thinking
it was the Industrial Revolution,
hundreds of years previously.
Certainly they'd been warning signs of
the calamity to come. The burning of coal
for heating, boiling of water for steam
engines and factories, for transportation
in trains and ships. They had no
filtration on their exhaust outlets, and it
carried with it a soot particles that
reduced visibility amongst other
chemicals.
Since coal had been mined to fire
furnaces of all sizes for hundreds of
years, it had been found that some coals
were both either higher or lower grades,
meaning high grade coals produced more
heat and less smoke, they burn more
cleanly, leaving less residue when their
fuel had been burnt through. Increasing
demand for coal to fuel the industrial
revolution played a significant role.
Open fireplaces with coal and wood to
burn created large amounts of soot and
the vast majority of houses in London
had fireplaces and the population
density was so great that it was a huge
contributor to this incident. Officially
blame was directed to the collective
individuals rather than industry, blaming
the cold weather at the time and people
burning more coal in their home open
fireplaces for causing the disaster. And
whilst technically this was the biggest
contributor, it certainly wasn't the
whole problem. Official fallout maps of
the soot following the incident showed
the largest concentrations of soot in
the predominant air-direction downwind
of 3 of the major coal-fired power
stations in the London area at the time,
being
Suffolk, Battersea and Kingston. These
3 power plants were approved by the
government for construction in the city
over a decade earlier, with the final
plant brought online in 1948, 4 years
before the disaster. Interestingly the
Battersea Power Station was resisted by
the royal family itself, specifically
taking time to write to the Prime
Minister of the time expressing their
concerns about introducing toxic gases
into this densely populated London area.
The Battersea Power Station was designed
with the capacity of 400MW and
when completed consumed 1,000,000 tonnes
of coal each year after its final
expansion. The exhaust fumes from the
other power stations all used a new
technology called "scrubbers," that were
designed to reduce Sulfur emissions. The
scrubbers used water and alkaline sprays
over a catalyst of Iron Oxide which
theoretically, converted Sulfur Dioxide
into Sulfuric Acid, prior to emission
into the atmosphere. However it proved to
be ineffective in use and the system was
removed from service in the 1960s
although, primarily because the
wastewater had been discharged into the
Thames and this was actually causing
significant environmental damage to the
rivers ecosystem. Financially the
government also contributed to the
disaster in an indirect way. The British
government at the time was bankrupt, and in
an attempt to settle their debts they
were selling the highest grade coal that
Britain produced overseas, to bring in
more money. At the same time they didn't
want to restrict local industry that was
capable of generating revenue and
helping to pull the country out of debt,
hence this redirection of the
highest-grade of coal and lack of will
to impose any restrictions on industry
meant that the lower grade coal that
emitted the most smoke and pollutants
was all that was left for the local
market, be that industrial or personal.
Not only were they burning more coal
than ever before, but they were burning
the dirtiest coal that they had. The
final contributor was the push for buses,
and that was happening the world over. As
part of the transition to buses and
whether you believe conspiracy theories
or not, the buses were unconstrained by
tracks and electrical overhead wires or
embedded power cables and were supposed
to relieve traffic congestion (so was
their sales pitch at the time.) Years
later though, studies showed that there
had been no improvement in traffic flow
from the removal of the trams and
introduction of the buses. The last
electric tram was removed from service
in London on the 5th of April, 1952 only
8 months before the incident. All the
trams had been replaced by nearly 8,000
diesel buses. The diesel buses at the
time were running on a much lower grade
diesel fuel mixture than that of today.
That was also higher and sulfur content.
The perfect storm of events then...perhaps
led to what was a huge death toll. The
government had approved 3 large
coal-fired power stations to be built in
central London.
Ineffective scrubbers on the power
stations didn't significantly curtail
their pollution. The post-war fallout had
left the country in debt with a
government drive to push for industrial
production not to be held back.
Selling high-grade coal to get the
country out of debt, left only low-grade
coal locally. Electric trams were removed
in favor of higher polluting diesel
buses. Cold weather at the time meant
more homes burnt more coal to stay warm
and a temperature inversion trapped a
cold air mass in the Thames Valley for
nearly 5 days. Most disturbingly
however it had already happened before.
In 1880 an estimated 2,000 people had
died due to excessive smoke in London
under a similar temperature inversion. A
parliamentary committee was formed at
the time and reported with
recommendations to better control local
industries spurred on by the Industrial
Revolution from spewing smoke into the
local air. These were mostly ignored and
eroded over subsequent decades, as
industry pushed forward. Starting on the
27th of October, 1948 and lasting 4
days in Donora, Pennsylvania during the
winter, the yellow smog was so thick that
you couldn't see your hand at the end of
your arm. The smog was described as a
deep yellow saffron colour and made your
eyes burn and water, and 20 people died
and 7,000 became sick as a direct result
of that smog. The Donora incident
specifically directly drove the 1950
International Air Conference.
The conference called for more smoke
control in living areas and better
regulation of industry. In the United
Kingdom the Housing Minister had blocked
the recommendations following the
conference. With a bit of further thought
and researched through, historical
records it became clear that London's
fogs are in fact the result of
industrial development since the 1800s
but even before in medieval times,
deforestation and fires burning in the
London area, began the ethos that London
was a foggy area. It isn't and it wasn't
really at least not especially. Certainly
the topography helped to amplify the
effects of air pollution, but before
those times there were no such fogs
recorded of that density or regularity.
So the truth is that we (human beings)
created the fogs of London. Those fogs
were written about by Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle and painted by Monet, and they were
our own doing. The final death toll 11
months following the incident, the
official investigation confirmed that
yes 4,000 had died during the
immediate timeline of the incident,
however a further 8,000 died
from complications directly related to
the fog with a timeline ending in late
February some 2 months following the
event. 4 months after the report was
released it was amended down by that
8,000 deaths claiming those
that had died after the fog had cleared
were in fact victims of an influenza
epidemic instead and not the fog. A
counterclaim by the World Health
Organization report that tracked down
the detailed causes of death during that
period in January and February,
determined that only 457 people out of
those 8,000 were in fact as a result of
influenza. As a direct result of this
incident the Clean Air Act was brought
into force in 1956. The primary
components of the Act included the
establishment of smoke-free areas which
is...effectively alignment with the
intentions of the 1950 International Air
Conference, and provided subsidies for
households that converted to cleaner
fuels for heating and cooking including
gas and electricity. The effects of the
Act weren't immediately felt for nearly
10 years,
and subsequent fogs in 1956, 1957 and
1962 claimed a further 1,500 lives. It
has been amended and extended several
times since, however it is widely
considered to be a landmark in
environmental protection legislation and
was a turning point in our modern world
in how we manage our air pollution. It
wouldn't happen again...would it? Well
China has become the world's largest
economy, built on industry and mass
production. Sounds familiar.
They are able to make a large amount of
the world's consumable products, but that
industrial drive is coming at a cost
just like it did to London 70yrs ago.
A combined World Bank and SEPA report
estimated that 760,000
people died prematurely each
year as a result of air pollution in
China. China are in much tighter control
of their media and what they report
outside the country and specific
incidents are not always reported. It
seems that we as human beings are rather
stupid. Fundamentally to survive our
bodies require food, water and air. If we
eat bad food, we get sick and can die. If
we drink bad water, we get sick and can
die. If we breathe bad air, we get sick
and can die. It's not hard to figure it
out, and yet time and again, we rely on
prevailing winds to bring fresh air to
blow away our own air pollution, and when
the wind doesn't blow and we don't
control our own air pollution...we die.
It's pretty simple. So why do we keep
screwing this up? If you're enjoying
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This was Causality. I'm John Chidgey. Thanks
for listening.
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