London, England (1873-74, winter)
Meuse Valley, Belgium (1930, December 2-5)
London, England (1934, January 21)
Donora, Pennsylvania, USA (1948, October 30-31)
London (1952, December)
New York City, New York, USA (1966, November 27) Forces of Nature: ThinkQuest 2000 (Team #C003603)
http://library.thinkquest.org/C003603/english/fogandmist/casestudies.shtml
Click on the links to read about fog which has occurred throughout history.
London is famous for its smoky, dirty skies and “pea-soup” nights wrapped in heavy fog. For many, the fog provides a romantic setting for mystery and intrigue, but even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous character, Dr. Watson, describes the fog as a “greasy, heavy brown swirl…condensing in oily drops upon the window panes.” During this winter, the fog lasted from November to February. In the week following the worst of it, deaths rose 75%.
An atmospheric event known as a thermal inversion trapped fog over a 15-mile-long stretch of high-walled Meuse Valley that contained many farms, villages, steel mills, and chemical plants. At the end of the first day, many residents complained about nausea, short breath, stinging eyes, and burning throats. In three days, 60 people had died and thousands more were ill with an unknown “disease.” Some think that the valley had been sprayed with poison gas, fumes had leaked from a chemical plant, or even that bubonic plague had broken out. The sickness was actually caused by pollutants trapped beneath the dense fog clouds. Death rates were subsequently made ten times above normal, especially among the elderly and those with respiratory problems. Thirty different chemicals were identified as causing the illness. The event did not lead to anti-pollution measures, and on September 5-6, 1972, another industrial accident occurring with fog conditions produced large concentrations of toxic sulfur dioxide gas, causing more sickness but no deaths.
This from the Associated Press: “A dreaded black fog settled upon London this afternoon so densely that it penetrated the Great Albert Hall, where Madame Galli-Curci sang to an audience which could only see her thru a fog. The fog was not so bad as the one on New Year’s day but it caused a number of accidents. The fog had lifted in most sections tonight.”
Weather conditions caused toxic gases from industrial and domestic furnaces to float above the coal mining community of Donora. 20 people died and another 6,000 became sick from the fog and smoke combination.
12,000 people died from the so-called killer fogs of London, produced by the condensation of water on the daily 2,000 tons of sulfur dioxide and pollutants produced by coal-burning industrial furnaces and home heating systems in the city. The fatal conditions began on Thursday, December 4. A high-pressure system moved over Britain, bringing dry air, cold temperatures, and light winds. During the night, the winds stopped and the Thames River basin experienced a severe temperature inversion, trapping cold air near the ground beneath a warm humid air layer. Heavy fog then began to form. For the next four days, tons of particulate matter from the furnaces entered this air mass, turning the sky yellow, amber, brown, and finally almost black. The air consequently became a blinding, suffocating cloud of gas that choked breathing passages and stung eyes with enough acidity to cause skin irritation. Cars were stopped in the roads as visibility dropped to a few feet. Air poured through window cracks and under doorways to permeate homes and buildings. Thousands, especially those with respiratory trouble, became seriously ill. The British Committee on Air Pollution reported, “The number of deaths over and above those normally expected in the last three weeks of December indicates some 4,000 people died of the ‘smog.’” As many as 8,000 others died later as a result of respiratory complications. Since this disaster, stricter restrictions have been placed on coal-burning furnaces. Anti-pollution laws are strongly enforced, and today London’s “pea-soupers” have been nearly eliminated.
About 400 people perished because of respiratory failure and heart attacks caused by extreme smog conditions.