"So then we said, wait a minute: The London fog in 1952. "Now we understand what's going on ," Zhang said. One explained the situation in China: The team found that ammonia, present in the atmosphere because of agricultural activity, could neutralize the acidity without stopping the creation of sulfates. Here, there were two separate breakthroughs. And as soon as the particles got too acidic, the reaction stopped: "The product would basically drive the reaction backward," Zhang explains. Both chemicals are produced by burning coal, so it seemed like "a very natural candidate" to explain what was happening in China.īut the result was extremely acidic. They had another way to try to recreate the haze - combining nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide in a humid environment, which could produce sulfates. "What we found out is that the traditional ways that people make sulfate didn't work," or worked too slowly. CREATIVE EDITORIAL VIDEO london smog 30 London Fog 1952 Premium High Res Photos Browse 30 london fog 1952 photos and images available, or search for london smog to find more great photos and pictures. "I was doing some work in my lab to see if I can reproduce some of the things my colleagues see in China," Zhang explains. The Clean Air Acts were only passed after the evil Global Warmer was finally brought down, which The Queen was just about to do. Somehow, sulfur dioxide, a common byproduct of coal-burning, was getting turned into sulfate, very quickly. A viewer wrote: Churchill is accused of killing 12,000 because he insisted on keeping coal and wood burning, causing pollution, smog, emphysema, civil unrest and mass murder. They were trying to solve a different mystery: why some severe haze around Beijing has a higher concentration of sulfates than they could explain based on their normal models. Official estimates put the death toll at 4,000, but the BBC reports research suggests the fatal fog might have killed as many as 12,000 people. But the smog that blanketed the city in December 1952 was unusually vicious: It lasted for five days and killed thousands of people. In the middle of the last century, London was no stranger to oppressive pea-soup fogs laced with smoke from coal fires. 6, 1952, was part of a five-day fog that killed thousands of people.Ĭentral Press/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesĪ team of atmospheric scientists researching pollution in China say they've cracked a 60-year-old mystery - with research that explains not only the haze over Beijing, but also the remarkably toxic Great Smog of London from 1952.īy examining conditions in China and experimenting in a lab, the scientists suggest that a combination of weather patterns and chemistry could have caused London's fog to turn into a haze of concentrated sulfuric acid. Heavy smog in London's Piccadilly Circus on Dec.
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