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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house

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Speaker 1: works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm

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Speaker 1: Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we have

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Speaker 1: a listener request. It is for listeners Stewart. So, London

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Speaker 1: has a long and established history as a very foggy place,

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Speaker 1: and for many centuries that fog was also very dirty.

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Speaker 1: In the eighteen fifties, Charles Dickens described London as fog

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Speaker 1: up the river where it flows among green airs and meadows,

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Speaker 1: fogged down the river where it rolls, defiled among the

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Speaker 1: tears of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great

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Speaker 1: and dirty city. Uh Like in the eighteen eighties when

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Speaker 1: Jack the Ripper was, you know, in London, being a

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Speaker 1: serial killer, that was even more terrifying because it was

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Speaker 1: all going on in this disgusting smog. Claude Monet, who

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Speaker 1: uh you know his his paintings really examined light and shadow,

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Speaker 1: went to London at the turn of the twentieth century

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Speaker 1: specifically to paint what the smag was doing to the sun.

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Speaker 1: So smog is not a modern Los Angeles thing, no,

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Speaker 1: So that is why when the Great London smog descended

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Speaker 1: in December of nineteen fifty two. Nobody quite realized anything

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Speaker 1: unusual was going on. People had been burning cold to

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Speaker 1: heat their homes in London at least since the Middle Ages,

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Speaker 1: and this dense grimy pea soup frog had been documented

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Speaker 1: all the way back to the sixteen hundreds that it

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Speaker 1: really did get worse. Um A lot of this like filth,

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Speaker 1: was coming from people burning cold to heat their homes,

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Speaker 1: but the Industrial Revolution did make it worse by adding

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Speaker 1: industrial smokestacks to the mix. There had also been some

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Speaker 1: possibly deadly smog before nineteen fifty two at various points.

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Speaker 1: This dense smog had rolled in during the dead of winter,

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Speaker 1: and it seemed like maybe more people were dying than normal,

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Speaker 1: but it was also usually during a bitter cold snap,

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Speaker 1: and so it wasn't completely clear whether it was the

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Speaker 1: smog or the cold that was killing people. Doctors had

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Speaker 1: suspected it's the Victorian era that smog could be deadly,

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Speaker 1: but they didn't really have a good way to prove it.

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Speaker 1: But in the case of the Great London Smog, it

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Speaker 1: was conclusive. This was an environmental disaster that was worse

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Speaker 1: than anything that had been documented at that point it UH.

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Speaker 1: It dwarfed some more recent smog related deaths that had

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Speaker 1: hit Built, Belgium in nineteen thirty and Donora, Pennsylvania in

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Speaker 1: eight and by the time it was over there was

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Speaker 1: no real there was a There were attempts to argue

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Speaker 1: that it was not the smog's fault, but it was

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Speaker 1: obvious that it was the smog's fault. Um. And at

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Speaker 1: its largest, the smog was a thirty co pometers or

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Speaker 1: eighteen miles around London, and before it was gone, it

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Speaker 1: had killed thousands of people. Yeah. And it all started

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Speaker 1: on Friday, December five of ninety two. UH. And at

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Speaker 1: first this smog wasn't particularly unusual as small went during

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Speaker 1: that first day, it was just your standard dry, smoky fog,

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Speaker 1: and people went about their business. Uh. That night, however,

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Speaker 1: the fog thickened and it took on a distinctly sulfurous smell.

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Speaker 1: So Normally, air near the ground is warmer than the

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Speaker 1: air above it, so hot air like smoke from a chimney,

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Speaker 1: can rise up through the cold air. But on the

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Speaker 1: night of December five, as the ground got colder, the

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Speaker 1: air near the ground also got colder, and it wound

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Speaker 1: up cooling off to a lower temperature than the air

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Speaker 1: above it. That's create that created what's known as a

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Speaker 1: thermal inversion. So smoke from chimney chimneys and smoke stacks

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Speaker 1: got trapped near the ground, and a high pressure area

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Speaker 1: over the city contributed to this problem them as well,

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Speaker 1: and a mist also formed in that layer of cool air,

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Speaker 1: which was also a very big problem. As water condensed

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Speaker 1: out of the air, it collected on the particles of soot, tar,

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Speaker 1: and sulfur dioxide, basically creating acid fog. Acid fog was

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Speaker 1: also not really an extraordinary situation in London at this point,

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Speaker 1: but normally in the morning, the sun would come out

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Speaker 1: and it would heat up the air in the ground again,

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Speaker 1: so smoke could start to rise normally and the sun

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Speaker 1: would evaporate all of this acid mist that was lingering.

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Speaker 1: But on the morning of December six, the smog was

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Speaker 1: so thick that the sun could not break through it,

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Speaker 1: so the air that was near the ground stayed cold

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Speaker 1: and the smog did not go anywhere. It was also

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Speaker 1: colder than normal, so people had to burn more cold

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Speaker 1: than usual to heat their homes. So as the smog

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Speaker 1: wore on, more and more pollution was added to this

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Speaker 1: already stagnant cloud of hovering acid rain every night during

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Speaker 1: the smog. When the when night fell, the fog would

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Speaker 1: just get thicker and thicker, and at the worst of it,

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Speaker 1: which was that Sunday, visibility dropped to as little as

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Speaker 1: a meter or about three ft. According to the Met Office,

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Speaker 1: Here's what was pumped into the air around London every

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Speaker 1: day during the smog. One thousand tons of smoke particles,

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Speaker 1: two thousand tons of carbon dioxide, a hundred and forty

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Speaker 1: tons of hydrochloric acid, and fourteen tons of fluorine compounds.

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Speaker 1: On top of that, about three hundred and seventy tons

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Speaker 1: of sulfur dioxide going into the air were converted into

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Speaker 1: eight hundred tons of sulfuric acid. During the worst of

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Speaker 1: a smog, you could not see the sun or as

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Speaker 1: a saying goes your hand in front of your face

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Speaker 1: or your own feet while you were standing up, so

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Speaker 1: basically settled on and blackened everything. Everything smelled terrible and

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Speaker 1: it was physically difficult to breathe. People wore masks or

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Speaker 1: covered their nose the mouth with handkerchiefs. This might have

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Speaker 1: helped a little bit, but not a lot Invisibility was

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Speaker 1: so bad that taxi and bus drivers couldn't see to drive,

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Speaker 1: so transportation along the roads ground to a halt and

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Speaker 1: people abandoned their vehicles because they either couldn't see or

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Speaker 1: couldn't get through the resulting gridlock. This completely overloaded the

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Speaker 1: London Underground, which was spared from the smog by virtue

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Speaker 1: simply of being underground. The BBC published an account of

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Speaker 1: Barbara Fuster, who described having gone out to dinner with

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Speaker 1: her fiance during the smog, and the smog was so

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Speaker 1: thick that her fiance couldn't see to drive home, and

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Speaker 1: the headlights of the car just reflected off the smog

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Speaker 1: and couldn't penetrate through it at all, so they used

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Speaker 1: the sidelights. She walked ahead of the car the whole

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Speaker 1: way in the range of the sidelights, while her fiance

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Speaker 1: leaned his head out the window so he could see her.

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Speaker 1: They also could not stop because the people behind them

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Speaker 1: would not be able to see their break lights, so

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Speaker 1: if they stopped that would have meant risk and getting

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Speaker 1: rear ended. And they proceeded in this manner for sixteen miles,

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Speaker 1: just a very long distance. Tracy and I have both

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Speaker 1: done some distance running and we know that that is

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Speaker 1: a very long distance, that's more than off marathon. So

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Speaker 1: they got home at five in the morning and everything,

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Speaker 1: their faces, their clothes, their vehicle completely black with soot.

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Speaker 1: So this may sound like the extraordinary effort of one

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Speaker 1: person to get home, but at ambulances and fire trucks

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Speaker 1: were doing exactly the same thing to get to where

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Speaker 1: they needed to go. And when the ambulance has failed

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Speaker 1: to run, people who needed to get to the hospital

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Speaker 1: walked there, so uh, you know, not so delightful. Patients

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Speaker 1: arrived with blackened faces and blue lips from their lack

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Speaker 1: of oxygen. Because remember the air was unbreathable. Boat traffic

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Speaker 1: on the Thames ground to a halt, as did air

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Speaker 1: traffic at Heathrow Airport. Flights were either canceled or diverted

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Speaker 1: to other airports that were outside of the smog. And

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Speaker 1: this smog disrupted the train schedules as well, and one

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Speaker 1: ferry across the English Channel was delayed by fifteen hours.

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Speaker 1: It had to anchor off the coast of France because

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Speaker 1: visibility was simply too bad for it to get to

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Speaker 1: England and Great Britain. Parents were advised to keep their

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Speaker 1: children home from school, not just because the air was foul,

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Speaker 1: but because people were literally afraid that the children would

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Speaker 1: get lost in the smog on their way there. And

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Speaker 1: because it was almost dark as night outside all the

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Speaker 1: time and the impassable roads kept police from being able

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Speaker 1: to respond, crime rates skyrocketed. Most sporting events during this

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Speaker 1: mog were canceled, including rugby and soccer games. This was

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Speaker 1: the first time that an event in Wimbley Stadium had

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Speaker 1: been canceled since the facility had opened in On the

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Speaker 1: other hand, Oxford and Cambridge were due to have a

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Speaker 1: cross country running competition competition and for some reason that

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Speaker 1: went ahead as planned, but because the runners couldn't really

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Speaker 1: see the field, there would be volunteers stationed to yell

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Speaker 1: at them which way to go, like come here this way.

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Speaker 1: I can't imagine what breathing at the rate of a

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Speaker 1: speed runner in that air quality must have felt like. Well,

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Speaker 1: in doing the research, I did not find anything about

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Speaker 1: like what the medical condition of these runners was when

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Speaker 1: it got to the end. Oh sounds horrible. On the

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Speaker 1: night of the eighth a theater in London had to

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Speaker 1: cancel the remainder of its performance of the opera La

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Speaker 1: Traviata after act one because the building had filled with smog.

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Speaker 1: Archivis also we're finding smog in the stacks at the

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Speaker 1: British Museum, so this sounds pretty horrifying to me. And

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Speaker 1: it went on like this for days until the wind

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Speaker 1: finally came to the rescue and it blew the fog

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Speaker 1: down the Thames and out to the North Sea on

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Speaker 1: Tuesday the ninth. It does indeed sound like a sci

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Speaker 1: fi film in many regards. I'm sure Vin Diesel will

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Speaker 1: star in the story of the smog. Uh Buses and

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Speaker 1: taxis were able to return to their service early quickly

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Speaker 1: after the wind blew this stuff away, but rail delays

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Speaker 1: did persist for a bit so apart from the inconvenience,

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Speaker 1: a lot of people died during this mog. A normal

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Speaker 1: death toll during this period of time in London would

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Speaker 1: have been one thousand, eight hundred fifty two people, but

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Speaker 1: during the smog, four thousand, seven hundred and three people died.

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Speaker 1: The death rate in the East End, which was home

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Speaker 1: to a lot of factories as well as being a

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Speaker 1: very poor and overcrowded part of town, was nine times

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Speaker 1: higher than normal Most of the people who died between

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Speaker 1: December five and December ten were people who already had

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Speaker 1: some kind of problem with their lungs or their ability

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Speaker 1: to breathe. The majority was elderly, which was another reason

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Speaker 1: it wasn't immediately a parent that something unusual was really happening. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and often repeated story is that because so many of

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Speaker 1: the people who died were already sick, nobody really realized

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Speaker 1: that the number of people dying was actually higher than

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Speaker 1: normal until the supplies of coffins and flowers started to

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Speaker 1: run low because of all of the um funeral services

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Speaker 1: that they had to have. I found multiple places citing

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Speaker 1: the story, but I couldn't find the original source of it.

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Speaker 1: But that's too crazy to leave out. Yeah, so people

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Speaker 1: were basically breathing acid. So, especially for people who already

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Speaker 1: had bronchitis or asthma or some of their condition, they're

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Speaker 1: already irritated. Lungs would just get more and more irritated,

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Speaker 1: and they would produce more and more mucus and an

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Speaker 1: effort of protecting themselves, which this amount of mucus just

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Speaker 1: made it harder to breathe. People wound up choking on

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Speaker 1: the mucus that their bodies were producing, or they died

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Speaker 1: of heart failure as their bodies struggled to support their

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Speaker 1: efforts to you. Twice as many children died as usual

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Speaker 1: for that period of time, and three times as many

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Speaker 1: adults between the ages of forty five and sixty four.

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Speaker 1: Babies were particularly hard hit as well, since the lungs

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Speaker 1: of infants are not as fully developed as older children.

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Speaker 1: According to the General Register Office, during the week ending

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Speaker 1: December so the week after the smog ended, fifty nine

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Speaker 1: percent of the increases and deaths came directly from respiratory diseases.

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Speaker 1: That number jumped to seventy six percent the following week

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Speaker 1: when the smog had cleared, but its effects on people's

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Speaker 1: respiratory systems lingered, and it's probably no surprise that the

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Speaker 1: smog also killed animals. The annual Smithfield Cattle Show was

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Speaker 1: going on in West London, and according to news reports,

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Speaker 1: a dozen prize cattle died. Some of these had to

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Speaker 1: be slaughtered because they were beyond help. Many other animals

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Speaker 1: needed serious veterinary attention. Interestingly, the animals sleeping and dirty

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Speaker 1: bedding largely survived, and the theories that the ammonia in

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Speaker 1: their betting neutralized the acid in the air, so the

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Speaker 1: this smog had a lot of effects for people in

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Speaker 1: London and for life in London afterwards. Even though the

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Speaker 1: worst of the fog moved out on the wind on

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Speaker 1: December ninth, more people than normal continued to die for

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Speaker 1: several more months afterward. By March of nineteen fifty three,

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Speaker 1: about thirteen thousand, five hundred more people than usual had died,

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Speaker 1: and it wasn't until three weeks after the smog had

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Speaker 1: cleared when the registrar published the death tolls that anybody

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Speaker 1: knew really how bad it had been. People compared this

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Speaker 1: spike and death to a cholera epidemic that had struck

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Speaker 1: nearly a hundred years earlier, and they also compared it

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Speaker 1: to the nineteen eighteen flu, which we've talked about before.

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Speaker 1: Even when it was conclusively shown that the smog had

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Speaker 1: definitely killed people and killed lots of people, a number

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Speaker 1: of politicians acted like smog was just an unchangeable fact

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Speaker 1: of life in London. Legislation for cleaner air was decried

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Speaker 1: as being a move of over regulation and basically a

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Speaker 1: lot of worrying over nothing. In the words of Harold McMillan,

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Speaker 1: who was then the Minister of Housing. Quote, today everybody

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Speaker 1: expects the government to solve every problem. It is a

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Speaker 1: symptom of the welfare state. For some reason or another,

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Speaker 1: smog has captured the imagination of the press and people.

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Speaker 1: I would suggest we form a committee. We cannot do

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Speaker 1: very much, but we can seem to be very busy,

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Speaker 1: and that is half the battle nowadays. There were also

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Speaker 1: fears that the city, which was still facing rationing and

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Speaker 1: debt in the wake of World War Two, could not

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Speaker 1: afford for people to switch to a cleaner fuel, and

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Speaker 1: for a while the government even tried to pin this

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Speaker 1: spike in deaths on the flu instead of on air quality. However,

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Speaker 1: this investigative committee originally forms to just sort of look busy,

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Speaker 1: found that there really was an actual problem that needed

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Speaker 1: to be addressed, and consequently Parliament passed the Clean Air

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Speaker 1: Act in nineteen fifty six. The Clean Air Acts included

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Speaker 1: provisions for setting up smoke free zones and to provide

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Speaker 1: money to homeowners to convert their heat source to something

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Speaker 1: cleaner than coal. It also prohibited furnaces from putting out

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Speaker 1: dark smoke. This didn't fix things overnight, and there was

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Speaker 1: at least one other deadly smog in London. There was

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Speaker 1: one that killed almost a thousand people in in January

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Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty six, and then another year later another

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Speaker 1: similar event occurred. Some of this was because it just

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Speaker 1: takes time to change how an entire city is heating

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Speaker 1: itself in the winter. New power stations and delivery systems

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Speaker 1: had to be built to accommodate the increased demand as

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Speaker 1: people converted their homes to use different sources of heat.

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Speaker 1: The air did get better, though, and the last London

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Speaker 1: smog that you know was this monumental but not so deadly,

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Speaker 1: took play us in nineteen sixty two. In nineteen sixty five,

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Speaker 1: natural gas became widely available in London and many households

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Speaker 1: converted to its use. There is still pollution in London,

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Speaker 1: you know, just like most industrialized places. Um, the smog

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Speaker 1: in London now more has to do with summer than

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Speaker 1: with winter because the pollutants of the air are mostly

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Speaker 1: tied to vehicle emissions rather than home heating, and they

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Speaker 1: react with heat and sunlight. And according to the World

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Speaker 1: Health Organization, every year around the world seven million deaths,

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Speaker 1: which breaks down to about one in eight are tied

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Speaker 1: to exposure to air pollution. Pollution. While there's not a

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Speaker 1: deadly smog blanketing everything, uh, air pollution is still definitely

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Speaker 1: a problem. So I'm glad Stewart asked us to talk

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Speaker 1: about This was something that I personally was very familiar with.

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Speaker 1: Although people who lived in London at the time like,

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Speaker 1: that's definitely a story that they remember. Well, I've seen

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Speaker 1: it mentioned, but I had never really investigated it and

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Speaker 1: didn't realize the breadth of it. Yeah, and the recency. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So I also have some listener mail that is also

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Speaker 1: about breathing and dying. So stupid Mary. Yes, Mary writes

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Speaker 1: to us UM and she writes about our nineteen eighteen

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Speaker 1: influenza epidemic. Uh, and she was one of a few

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Speaker 1: letters that we got about the distribution of masks. She says,

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Speaker 1: you made the comment that masks are not effective at

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Speaker 1: preventing viral transmission. This is actually untrue, and mask isolation,

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Speaker 1: along with handwashing, is the primary method to prevent fluid

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Speaker 1: transmission and healthcare settings. The problem in nineteen eighteen and

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Speaker 1: now is that infected persons are able to spread influenza.

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Speaker 1: For a couple of days before they have symptoms, and

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Speaker 1: waiting to mask them when they have symptoms is too late.

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Speaker 1: In addition, small children and the elderly can shed virus

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Speaker 1: for a while after their symptoms have improved. I also

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Speaker 1: suspect that anyone in nineteen eighteen with sneezing and a

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Speaker 1: cough who felt well enough to be out in public

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Speaker 1: may have merely had a cold. Um. Another point is

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Speaker 1: the remark that the hemorrhagic pneumonia scene with this illness

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Speaker 1: was all due to secondary infections. That was the thinking

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Speaker 1: for a long time. Recently, the studies done on the

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Speaker 1: virus identified in the Inuit cadaver is suggested this particular

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Speaker 1: viral strain actually was more virulent than most strains and

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Speaker 1: was often the cause of this catastrophic and fatal UH pneumonia.

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Speaker 1: There's a great story of one community's response to the epidemic.

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Speaker 1: I believe it was Silverton, Colorado, which completely isolated the town.

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Speaker 1: Anyone trying to enter the town was arrested and jailed.

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Speaker 1: I believe this was one of the only communicate communities

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Speaker 1: in the United States that did not have a death

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Speaker 1: due to the Spanish flu. Keep up the great work, Mary,

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Speaker 1: thank you, Mary, It's very funny. My sources that I

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Speaker 1: was researching during the podcast unanimously felt that the distribution

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Speaker 1: of masks was not effective, and we have gotten several

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Speaker 1: letters uh after the podcast came out saying the apposite.

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Speaker 1: So there you go. If you would like to write

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Speaker 1: to us about this or any other subject you kid

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Speaker 1: or a history podcast at how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: Our facebook is Facebook dot com slash misspit history, and

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Speaker 1: missed in history dot tumbler dot com and we are

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Speaker 1: on Interest. If you would like to learn a little

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Speaker 1: more about what we talked about today, you can come

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Speaker 1: smog in the search bar and you will find a

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Speaker 1: couple of articles about smog. One of them is whether

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Speaker 1: smog makes for more beautiful sunsets, which would be I

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Speaker 1: guess I'm blessing and a curse. And you can come

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Speaker 1: to our website miss in history dot com to find

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Speaker 1: an archive of every episode. So do all of that

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Speaker 1: and all up more at either of our websites with

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Speaker 1: our house stuff works dot com and missing history dot

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Speaker 1: com for more on those thousands of other topics. Is

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Speaker 1: it how to works dot com in in