The nature of London fogs is well known even from school geography textbooks. They especially annoyed the residents of the English capital in the 1950s, when stove heating existed everywhere in the country. Smoke from the chimneys of factories, factories, houses. And in the autumn, the warm, moist air of the Thames, mixing with gasoline exhaust from cars, with the smoke of factory chimneys and carbon monoxide from fired home stoves, turned into an unimaginably dense gray and smelly mixture that fell into the streets with a heavy blanket. The scourge of London (like a number of other cities in America, Europe and Asia) has become the so-called smog - a poisonous mixture of smoke and gas waste from chemical enterprises with fog. People coughed, brought handkerchiefs to their mouths, cursed the fog. At that time, very few people imagined what danger to the health of the inhabitants this smog concealed in itself.
The first catastrophic cases of smog poisoning of people were noted in Belgium. As a result of excessive air poisoning from the Liège factories in the Meuse Valley, sixty people died in December 1930 and more than a thousand were injured. At the end of December 1948 in Donor (Pennsylvania, USA) more than two thousand people suffered from smog.
A light haze of fog, which paints everything in faded colors, sometimes even gives a peculiar charm. But the trouble is when the fog thickens in autumn or winter. Late autumn turning into winter was a nightmare for the residents of the British capital. A thick veil descends on the city, heavy hazy air makes it difficult to see on the streets, creeps into the premises of public buildings - cinemas, theaters, restaurants, shops, clubs, filling them with a stinking stench. It gets into homes, clothes give off a pungent smell, even food tastes like smog.
It was in the autumn days, when all this gray mass descended on the city, that problems began: the speed of cars decreased, traffic jams formed at intersections, which were beyond the control of a whole army of traffic police. Pedestrians make their way along the walls of buildings to the nearest metro stations, and motorists have no choice but to take a nap while waiting for the fog to clear. But very often even the honking cars ran into each other, in conditions of poor visibility, red double-decker buses collided, pedestrians scurried in different directions. The hustle and bustle, confusion reached panic, and the first victims of traffic appeared.
The situation was no better with the trains arriving in London. They literally made their way by touch. Searchlights turned on, speed decreased. And on cars running parallel to the highway, car headlights were also on, sirens buzzed, and hundreds of car signals sounded. The same situation was in the port, where dozens of ships arrived.
But the worst in such conditions was for asthmatics and all those who suffered in various forms of pulmonary diseases. And healthy people at this time also experienced a lack of oxygen. The weakest became the first victims of the London smokehouse. With a siren, ambulances drove cautiously through the city, bringing coughing and gasping people to hospitals.
What is fog? What is its danger to humans? Mist is formed by condensation or sublimation of water vapor on aerosolized liquid or solid particles in the air. It usually forms at temperatures over 20 degrees. But it can appear at lower temperatures. In this case, visibility deteriorates significantly and the density of the fog depends on the size of the particles that form it. Most often, fogs are formed in settlements, especially in those in which there is an increased release of hygroscopic condensation nuclei, in particular, combustion products.
Now a few words about London. This city is located on a plain, at an altitude of only five meters above sea level. It is surrounded by chalky cuesta ridges. The climate is predominantly marine, with mild winters and cool summers. The average temperature of the coldest month (January) is 5.3 ° C, the warmest (July) - 18.9 ° C, with 645 mm of precipitation per year. It is in such natural and climatic conditions that fogs are most often formed.
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The deadliest for the inhabitants of London was the fog in December 1952, which was mixed with sour coal soot from the pipes. The air turned gray and visibility deteriorated. And suddenly hundreds of people were poisoned at once. All hospitals were overcrowded, and victims of the fog continued to arrive. Moreover, doctors turned out to be practically powerless to help patients with anything. How to protect yourself from air pollution, which also affected the medical staff? Oxygen pillows were needed - they were not enough. We needed sunlight and wind - they were not. The asthmatics were suffocating. There were problems with medications. And the deadly harvest was not long in coming. In the first months of 1953, four thousand deaths were recorded. In total, twelve thousand people died during the year.
London, like other cities in Europe, was shocked by these numbers. Actually, these terrible consequences of smog forced the government to take urgent measures to create a fundamentally new heating system, and above all to abandon coal, switch to cleaner fuel oil, oil and gas.
However, this disaster was not the last. Exactly ten years later, the situation unfortunately repeated itself. In December 1962, a dense cloud of fog descended over London and throughout central England. It was on these December days that many residents of the capital of Great Britain put on gas masks for the first time - it was dangerous to breathe exhaust gases mixed with heavy humid air. The death toll has reached 106 people. In addition, the increased air humidity due to the resulting electrical conductivity has caused many electrical appliances to ignite. Since that time, fog (or smog) has been called killer-smog, or fog-killer.
From the book: "HUNDRED GREAT DISASTERS". ON. Ionina, M. N. Kubeev