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posted by martyb on Tuesday November 22 2016, @08:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-acid-rain-feels-like-for-fish? dept.

In December 1952, a dense fog fell over London that lasted roughly four days, dropping visibility and making it hard to breathe. At the time, residents paid little attention to the strange event, writing it off as just another natural fog, but once it lifted, people started dying.

The event – referred to as the Great Smog – led to the death of roughly 12,000 people, and the hospitalisation of up to 150,000. But how could something like this happen? 

[...] Nw [sic], over 60 years later, an international team of researchers might have finally figured it out, as part of an investigation into China's modern air pollution issues.

The answer is actually pretty terrifying – it turns out people were breathing in the fog equivalent of acid rain.


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  • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday November 22 2016, @02:55PM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Tuesday November 22 2016, @02:55PM (#431238) Homepage Journal

    Not just power stations. Many homes were still being heated with coal back then. I remember cleaning the ashes out of my grandparents' furnace as a child, that would have been at least 1957.

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  • (Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Tuesday November 22 2016, @05:26PM

    by Dr Spin (5239) on Tuesday November 22 2016, @05:26PM (#431348)

    Almost every room in London had a coal fire in 1953. I remember in the winter of 1956, as a 7 year old, being able to stretch out
      my arm and not see my fist in the smog. The Clean Air Act of 1956 made it illegal to burn high sulphur coal.

    I have never heard of a "furnace" outside of industrial manufacture in London. We call them boilers - and there were not many in 1957.

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  • (Score: 2) by Whoever on Tuesday November 22 2016, @06:30PM

    by Whoever (4524) on Tuesday November 22 2016, @06:30PM (#431389) Journal

    Are you sure the stove wasn't burning coke?

    I remember my parents' house in the '60s used a coke stove to heat water. Other heating was sometimes coal fireplaces, but mostly electric heaters.

    • (Score: 2) by number11 on Tuesday November 22 2016, @08:25PM

      by number11 (1170) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 22 2016, @08:25PM (#431458)

      Are you sure the stove wasn't burning coke?

      I remember my parents' house in the '60s used a coke stove to heat water. Other heating was sometimes coal fireplaces, but mostly electric heaters.

      Probably depends on where you were. The house I grew up in had a hand-stoked coal furnace until the late '60s, when a natural gas line was laid. Rural New York, coal from nearby Pennsylvania. Some of the neighbors used fuel oil or had kerosene heaters, that's paraffin to you UK types (or both.. I remember my mom was rightfully worried about the unvented kero space heater at my best friend's house, the place stunk of kerosene). I don't remember anyone using electric heaters, they were too costly to operate and mostly house wiring couldn't handle the load anyhow.

    • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday November 23 2016, @02:46AM

      by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Wednesday November 23 2016, @02:46AM (#431628) Homepage Journal

      No, it was coal, no water or forced air added. We burned coke in a blacksmithing class I took four decades ago, though.

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