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I remember some years ago driving from Long Island to Upstate on a hot, humid, sunny day (high 80s; well mid 80s in Long Island. Passing through New York City, the sky turned hazy and a bit cloudy and then it returned to clear blue again. Pollution?
There was a lot of industry and factories here in the NY metropolitan area back then. Not to mention cars, trucks, buses, etc. spout out a lot more pollution. Certainly impossible to achieve 100% pollution-free air in today's modern society, but the air quality has improved drastically over the 30 years or so.
London can get quite smoggy during hot, calm weather.
According to this article, the square mile City of London is one of the most polluted places in Europe in terms of air quality (it's very clean in most other aspects), though the headline is a bit sensationalist.
I love the south east in general but hate London, dirty crowded place. Rural parts of SE England west of London are often lovely though and don't get all the smog because it blows eastwards
There have been several historical smog events in both the U.S. and in Europe. There was a smog in London that was reported to have killed over 2000 people in 1952....
But the signature smog event in this country's recent history occurred in the Monongahela Valley shortly before I was born. Donora, PA was a bustling factory town roughly 20 miles upstream from Pittsburg. Among many other heavy industries there was a zinc reduction plant that ran hot and heavy for many years after the war ended.
On 10/27/1948, an air inversion on steroids settled in over western Pennsylvania locking the entire Monongahela basin under a toxic blanket of fog, smog, soot and mega doses of particulates. By the 29th visibility was cut to yards and one eyewitness reported the smoke coming from the exhausts of steam locomotives barely got above the smokestacks when it flowed down to the ground and spread out like giant spills of India ink.
Needless to say, people started showing symptoms of respiratory distress and in Donora, 20 of them eventually died. Nearly 7000 out of a total population of 14000 were severely enough sickened to require medical attention. What did such a masterful job of ruining the resident's health was the sulfur dioxide, sulfuric acid, NOx's and fluorine gas that would normally be dispersed in the atmosphere at hundreds or thousands of feet, sank to ground level and accumulated to toxic concentrations. It was said that the concentration of fluorine gas was 20 times what was considered a safe upper limit but I don't know how true that is.
It was determined later on that much of this poisonous brew emanated from the zinc reduction plant I mentioned earlier. There was years worth of litigation following and several companies eventually settled but the first stirrings of a movement to clean up our air nationwide stemmed from this awful incident.
The inversion mercifully released its grip rather quickly and on 10/31, after a cold front ushered in rain and far fresher air, the crisis abated. Two months later, Dr. Clarence Mills from Cincinatti University published a study that stated if the inversion had lasted any longer, say two weeks (which isn't all that long as inversions go) as many as a third of Donora's residents might have perished.
Early this year we have thick smog pollution. On the worst day (3/13/2014) the oxygen concentration was 1% rather than 21%. Pollution index was around 400 (the upper limit for "safe" is 100). No sunshine at all. The only "positive" was the high of that day was cooler (around 28-29 C instead of 31-33 C, I guess), but the nighttime temp was warmer (maybe remain similar 23-24 C, but the smog increased the realfeel).
NB : Usually the smog happen (almost) every year but in the middle of the year when the southwesterly wind blow, so the wind cleared off the smog while moving through SE (in june 2013 the smog was quite thick so the wind blow the smog to Malaysia and Singapore). This year it happened in February-March with northeasterly winds, so the smog travelled to the SW of Riau. But in early-mid march there was no rain, and the wind was calm, and the slash-and-burn fires keep continuing, so that the smog remained in the center of Riau province, reduced the visibility to below-1000ft levels (even below-100m in some places!!!) on march 13-14 2014. Schools and flights were off. My mid-semester exam was delayed, and because of the school-off for about 2 weeks, the school gave me some homework for studying. And finally on 3/15-3/17 2014, there was enough rain to clear off the smog. On the morning of 3/18 the air felt soooooo fresh.
In the past 1.5 months smog become the norm here, drought (el nino) and people doing slash-and-burn
Wunderground display "smog" for current conditions but not in forecasts
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