Some things just go together: peanut butter and jelly, bacon and eggs, milk and cereal, London and smog. Or at least, that’s the way things used to be until the Great Smog of 1952. (Don’t worry, the first three pairings are safe). If you’ve watched The Crown, you may remember an early episode in which a thick, noxious smog surrounded the entire city of London for days on end. People coughing, hacking, collapsing. Traffic ground to a standstill. Authorities in denial. What was actually going on in December 1952 to lead to such conditions? What was in the smog to make it so toxic? And how did this severe pollution event lead to massive changes in air quality regulations around the world? Tune in to find out all this and more (including what The Crown got wrong).
| History | Biology |
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| Laskin, D., 2006. The great London smog. Weatherwise, 59(6), pp.42-45. [meterological journal but not peer reviewed] | |
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| Badenhorst, C.J., 2007. Occupational health and safety risks associated with sulphur dioxide. Journal of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, 107(5), pp.299-303. | |
| Wang, G., Zhang, R., Gomez, M.E., Yang, L., Levy Zamora, M., Hu, M., Lin, Y., Peng, J., Guo, S., Meng, J. and Li, J., 2016. Persistent sulfate formation from London Fog to Chinese haze. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(48), pp.13630-13635. | |
| Orellano, P., Reynoso, J. and Quaranta, N., 2021. Short-term exposure to sulphur dioxide (SO2) and all-cause and respiratory mortality: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Environment international, 150, p.106434. | |
| Zhang, D., Liu, J. and Li, B., 2014. Tackling air pollution in China—What do we learn from the great smog of 1950s in London. Sustainability, 6(8), pp.5322-5338. | |
| Committee on public health, New York Academy of Medicine. 1966. Air pollution and health. Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 42(7) pp.588-619 | |
| WHO. June 2024. Health Consequences of air pollution on populations https://www.who.int/news/item/25-06-2024-what-are-health-consequences-of-air-pollution-on-populations | |
| WHO. Air quality, energy and health. https://www.who.int/teams/environment-climate-change-and-health/air-quality-and-health/health-impacts/types-of-pollutants |
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