1/14/2024 0 Comments London fog weather or not![]() The levels are the highest we’ve been able to find, but I would have thought if you looked hard, you could probably find levels almost as high in other large cities.” “We’re certainly as good as the best, if not the best, in terms of monitoring. No one else measures it as accurately as we do.” “Don’t tell me there isn’t a street somewhere similar to Oxford Street with higher values. “We have one of the most robust air pollution measurement networks in the world,” he says. To solve the particle problem, NO2 emissions were being increased.”Īnd one of the main reasons that London’s figures look so grim, he says, may be that London is simply better at measuring pollution than everyone else. “These trap the particles on filters, but every now and again they have to be burned off – NO in emissions is converted to NO2 which helps to oxidise and burn off particles in the filter. ![]() ![]() “Diesels emit particles in much larger quantities than petrol cars so were fitted with particle filters,” says Williams. Ironically, the effect of diesel engines has been made worse by the use of technology designed to make them less polluting. Diesel vehicles, which form more than a third of London’s road traffic, are the biggest culprits.īecause of their fuel efficiency and lower CO2 emissions, diesel engines have been heavily incentivised over the last couple of decades – with successive governments turning a blind eye to their higher particulate and NOx (mono-nitrogen oxides NO and NO2) emissions. But according to the government's Department for Environment and Rural Affairs, emissions from transport account for at least 80%. Nevertheless, says the study's author Dr Heather Walton, there is still some uncertainty on exactly how many deaths can be attributed to the gas. Only now have researchers been able to conclude that there is an independent effect. While scientists have been aware of NO2’s toxic properties for many years, the fact that it’s usually present with other pollutants has made it difficult to isolate its impact, says Kings College air quality specialist Martin Williams. The study, which was carried out for Transport for London by Kings College London’s Environmental Research Group, attributes these premature deaths to two main pollutants: fine particulates known as PM2.5 and the toxic gas nitrogen dioxide (NO2). And with a recent study suggesting that pollution in the capital claims as many as 9,500 lives a year, a growing number of scientists, politicians and campaigners believe that on the eve of the Clean Air Act's 60th anniversary, the UK must once again invoke its pioneering spirit. ![]() In the years that followed, a host of other industrial nations were inspired to follow suit.īut, while air pollution from coal may be a thing of past, London's air quality problem hasn’t gone away. Public health was vastly improved flora and fauna that had all but vanished from urban places by the 1950s began to flourish and the grand architecture of Britain's cities was no longer obscured beneath a thick layer of soot and grime. The act was truly revolutionary, representing a major global milestone in environmental protection. Some even celebrated air pollution as a tangible measure of Britain's industrial vitality, while the blazing coal fire, with all its cosy connotations of ‘home and hearth’, was a luxury few were prepared to give up. “In Britain’s coal-fuelled cities, smoke was tolerated for more than a century as a trade-off for jobs and home comforts,” says environmental historian Dr Stephen Mosley. It also marked something of a turning point: until then, people had accepted smog as a necessary evil. Official estimates at the time put the number of fatalities at 4,000 – more civilian casualties than were caused by any single incident during the war – while recent research suggests that it may have caused as many as 12,000 deaths.Īlthough ‘pea-soupers’, as the smogs were known, had been an unavoidable feature of Britain's major cities for more than a hundred years, the Great Smog of 1952 was the worst. But while the smoke would normally disperse into the atmosphere, an anticyclone hanging over the region created an inversion – trapping the pollution close to the ground and leading to the formation of a sulphurous, toxic shroud that would blanket the capital for the next five days.īefore the weather conditions changed and the smog retreated, thousands had died. ![]() On that cold, clear day in 1952, Londoners huddled around their coal fires for warmth. ![]()
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