Mystery Of London's 1952 Killer Fog Is Solved:
Londoners are used to a regular dose of fog, drizzle, and cloud in the winter. But in early December 1952, the city's fog took a much deadlier turn.
By the time "the big smoke" had lifted just five days later, it had killed 4,000 people and left 150,000 others seriously ill in hospital with respiratory tract infections. In the long term, it's estimated at least 12,000 people died from the killer fog, along with thousands of animals.
[...] Sulfates were a key component of the London fog. This gave the fog its definitively thick, smelly, and toxic properties. It's always been correctly assumed that the London fog was caused by sulfur dioxide released by the burning of low-quality soft coal from chimneys, industry, and power plants. However, why this sulfur dioxide turned into sulfuric acid remained unknown.
[...] "Our results showed that this process was facilitated by nitrogen dioxide, another co-product of coal burning, and occurred initially on natural fog," lead author Renyi Zhang of Texas A&M University explained in a statement.
"Another key aspect in the conversion of sulfur dioxide to sulfate is that it produces acidic particles, which subsequently inhibits this process. Natural fog contained larger particles of several tens of micrometers in size, and the acid formed was sufficiently diluted. Evaporation of those fog particles then left smaller acidic haze particles that covered the city."
A similar chemistry is happening right now in the air of rapidly industrializing Asian cities, many of which are in China. [..] High levels of ammonia from China's extensive fertilizer use and road traffic neutralizes the particles. This makes it less acidic, but a still utterly unsavory cocktail of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.
Journal Reference:
Gehui Wang, Renyi Zhang, Mario E. Gomez, et al. Persistent sulfate formation from London Fog to Chinese haze [open], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1616540113)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2020, @06:03PM (2 children)
Clean coal... the fuel that will power Trump's re-election in 2024.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Bloopie on Sunday November 29 2020, @09:45PM (1 child)
If any fuel powers Trump's "re-election" in 2024, it's going to be a mixture of horseshit and bullshit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2020, @09:47AM
The only thing that would get Trump elected in 2024 is if the democrats run either Zombie Hillary or Zombie Joe against him. So about 50 - 50.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Dr Spin on Sunday November 29 2020, @07:30PM (14 children)
The pollutant was sulphur, not sulfur.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 5, Informative) by pTamok on Sunday November 29 2020, @08:47PM (4 children)
No. IUPAC standard spelling is sulfur. Sulphur is not an allowed variant.
The IUPAC standard spelling for element 13 (Al) is Aluminium, but Aluminum is an allowed variant, and element 55 (Cs) is Caesium, with Cesium as an allowed variant.
The recommended spellings of the names of the elements in English are listed in the 'Red Book [iupac.org]' published by IUPAC, in Table I beginning on page 248 (pdf page 260).
Quite why sulphur is not an allowed variant, I do not know, but it is not.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday November 30 2020, @09:21AM (3 children)
> IUPAC standard spelling is sulfur.
I don't know who IUPAC is, but the Oxford English Dictionary lists Sulphur.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Taibhsear on Monday November 30 2020, @11:34AM (2 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Union_of_Pure_and_Applied_Chemistry [wikipedia.org]
They standardize the names for chemicals for the whole world. People typically first learn about it in high school chemistry class.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday November 30 2020, @12:49PM
Would you like some tea with that?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday November 30 2020, @12:49PM
Or perhaps a scone?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Sunday November 29 2020, @10:31PM (8 children)
We inherited the word with an 'f' in it, and then for no good reason at all mangled it. The suggestion of a phi from greek is completely bogus, it's not a word with a greek root (we do borrow the greek root in our thio- words), a mistake was made, and it should be unmade.
OK, I still spell it sulphur about 80% of the time, but most of the time I catch myself and correct it, and the number that sneak through is decreasing year by year.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday November 30 2020, @02:55AM (1 child)
When I was a sprout, it was sulphur. Here's a fine argument (read the comments for more info):
https://grammarist.com/spelling/sulfur-sulphur/ [grammarist.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday November 30 2020, @09:02AM
Sheesh, the comments are depressing, it's almost as if people can't read, or write, English any more.
The only coherent new information in them was from someone who thinks that the only use of the word was within academia, which would require some serious justification, and in the absense of that would be a trivium that changes nothing.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/sulfur
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday November 30 2020, @02:58AM (4 children)
Forgot to finish what I was saying... came into English from French (see? bad!) soufre, a corruption of Latin sulphuris.
So it's the f that's fake. So there.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday November 30 2020, @09:04AM (3 children)
If we got it from sulphuris, you'd have a point, but we didn't, we inherited an 'f' form, so that's what we get to work with.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday November 30 2020, @02:44PM (2 children)
Hmmph. Latin is a proper language. French doesn't even know how to pronounce common letters!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday November 30 2020, @04:21PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Monday November 30 2020, @05:56PM
I ran away from French at the first opportunity (was required in 7th grade), but dearly loved Latin. Unfortunately it was dropped the next year, and 50 years later mine has mostly declined and fallen. But linguistics-anything is fascinating stuff. Agreed that would be a good class at the high school level. I think it starts to be interesting once one has a smattering (however small) of various languages and can start to see the connections.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2020, @04:47AM
To the delicate Brit I say go phuck yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2020, @07:51PM (5 children)
Killer Frog, what killer frog?....ok, so there was always the chance of running into tsathoggua late night in the tube, or around Crouch End Towen with the rest of the usual suspects, but then he's really more toady than froggy...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2020, @07:59PM (2 children)
Pepe is not amused that you think him toady.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2020, @08:07PM
I thought Pepe was into Voter Frog?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2020, @08:13PM
Pepe?, him I not think toady, him, I think he yestoady's thing..
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday November 30 2020, @08:31AM (1 child)
He means Edith Piaf, capable of making your ears bleed at forty paces.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Monday November 30 2020, @01:24PM
Wow. I've heard of her. I'm an inveterate fan of the old BBC show "My Music", and they mentioned her a few times.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday November 29 2020, @10:26PM
See also the lead chamber process [wikipedia.org], which uses nitrogen oxide as a catalyst.
Backyard chemistry [youtube.com]
An 1970'-ies doco [youtube.com], just before the lead chamber process got dropped from industrial practices.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford