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  • Author Author: shabaz
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Share your smog photos - In the air of 1952

shabaz

Interesting photos of London from 1952. This is Nelson's Column:

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The photo above is from wikipedia. The smog was caused as a result of burning coal. Read the full article here. This article from the met office has further information.

 

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This photo is from an encyclopaedia (I can't recognise the area, but the sign on one of the buildings to the right says Sheraton I think).

Apparently smog killed between 4000-12,000 people that year, when smog was particularly bad for five days in December.

Afterwards, the Clean Air Act of 1956 resulted in dramatic improvements within just years. Smokeless fuel was mandated in certain areas. This resulted in far lower industrial coal burning, and railway output was eventually diminished to nil.

  • in reply to Problemchild

    Surely the electricity usage generates smog

    We only have one coal powered electricity station, and they mothballed it for a while as its too expensive to run.

    Most electricity is hydro, with a little bit wind and geo-thermal.

     

    Mark

  • in reply to mcb1

    Surely the electricity usage generates smog but somewhere else, also how dense does a city need to be for this to be a realistic issue?

     

    Any way indirectly we produce similar levels of pollution per person it's now that we ship our industry over to the likes of China and pollute there instead.

  • in reply to mcb1

    It's a good point, attempting to fix one thing can lead to problems elsewhere.

    To the point of health, I remember some article about how since spraying DDT etc on crops in the 1950s (and later in some countries), and all the other industrial chemicals around, scientists tested generation X and found they had traces of more than 100 artificial compounds inside them, as a result of their mother being exposed to DDT, plastics, etc. And it will be passed to their offspring.

  • We keep getting these images in the Christchurch Press, showing the 'smog'.

    In our case the image actually shows the water vapour trapped under the inversion layer, and while this is in place any smoke articles will remain trapped as well.

     

    I've yet to see a camera that can take an image of 'smog' (which is usually the aprticles below 10 microns)

    http%3A%2F%2Fecan.govt.nz%2Fadvice%2Fyour-school%2Flesson-resources%2FDocuments%2FEbox_AIR_Apr06.pdf

     

    While our ecan (Environment Canterbury a regional council) has mandated to get rid of all open fires and older wood burners, they have been reluctant to look at rules that allow newer clean burning device that produce much less 'particulate' and are pushing everyone into electricity.

    This model works well ....until they have a power cut or earthquakes that destroy a large infrastructure.

    This model also results in poor heating leading to other illness especially on older people and fixed incomes.

     

    So you fix one problem that causes x deaths (questionable as no one actually dies from 'polution') on a few days of the year, but results a lot more people having health issues than may remain for the rest of their life.

     

    Mark