Fifty years later we're still blind to the fog
By Tom Hutchinson
Saturday, December 28, 2002

Fifty years ago this month in December 1952, a great blanket of yellow choking smog descended on the city of London, England. By the time the air cleared four days later 4,000 people were dead or dying. By January 1953 the reputed British Medical Journal reported that an estimated 4,700 deaths were immediately attributed to the smog.

This was a pivotal event in the recognition that air pollution kills and that the price of seriously contaminated air is death, lingering illness, and human misery. Yet, at the actual time of the smog, few recognized the severity of what was happening. The smog was euphemistically described as causing excess deaths, which is to say, above the normal for that period in London. Excess sounds so reasonable and something not to worry about. The excess people were asthmatics, people with bronchitis and pneumonia, the elderly and babies.

The yellow pea-soupers were and are the backdrop for many movies and for the gruesome activities of Jack the Ripper. Other British cities, notably Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, Birmingham, Newcastle, as well as numerous European ones including Berlin, Hamburg, Paris and Amsterdam, all had their history of horrific smogs during the era of domestic coal burning. But it took 4,700 deaths in the British capital to actually trigger serious action to reduce the damage. Even then, it took almost four years before the Clean Air Act came into being; and it was opposed almost all of the way.

The Clean Air Act focussed mainly on reducing the visible components of the smog; the soot and floating particles. Sulphur dioxide was reduced coincidentally by these measures. It did this by centralizing power generation to central heating plants and by improving efficiency of the old cosy domestic fireplaces fuelled by coal. The poor quality, dirty sulphur-laden bituminous coal was banned from domestic fireplaces and a switch to better burning anthracite coal was begun. Because families in many mining communities were helped by cheap or free coal, often of the bitumen-type, a special dispensation was made for a number of years. You must not burn sulphur-laden coal in London or Birmingham but it was all right to do so in Wigan and Doncaster. This rather reminds me of the original ban on DDT usage in Ontario, with the exception that you could still use it on tobacco crops.

Much has happened that should ensure that educated nations avoid the clearly documented environmental problems of the past. Yet in 2000 an Ontario Medical Association epidemiological study found that approximately 1,800 people die each year in Ontario from direct and indirect effects of air pollution 1,000 of those in the Greater Toronto Area.

It's not a London-type smog that is doing it but rather the combined effects of photochemical oxidants, primarily ozone and suspended particulates. The rural areas are not immune as reports from 2001 and 2002 make very clear. While those living downwind of Detroit and Sarnia in south-western Ontario are encouraged to blame the United States and Mr. Bush's actions on coal and oil energy generation are guaranteed to make it much worse the area of cottage county including the Kawarthas and all the way to Algonquin Park now receive a long season of seriously deteriorated air quality. We had 52 air quality advisories in the past two years in Ontario and they can now occur all the way from April to October.

Are we in good hands and are we getting the best scientific information as to what is happening? Are we acting on this information to protect the public and the farmers, and to develop good strategies to mitigate the worst effects in Ontario and in Canada? Is funding for research into air pollution impacts on human health and on the wider environment a top priority of government? The answer is a resounding no.

Virtually all "effects" research ceased in Canada six years ago. Ontario pulled clean out of the research on ideological grounds, feeling that environmental "busy- body" research got in the way of real progress and hindered the drive to job creation through the private sector. The Brampton air effects research centre of the Ontario Ministry of the Environment was mothballed and then turned into a shooting range for the police and a tactical training centre.

We don't want a repeat of Sept. 11, for sure. But are we equally concerned about avoiding a repeat of December 1952? Apparently not. Indeed we don't even have a memory of it. We can write off the OMA's 1,800 excess deaths a year without even a debate, never mind serious attempts to rectify the situation. They are just a statistic, unless they are your own relatives and friends.

Bruce Knapp, now 84, recorded his personal experiences during the four days of the smog, when he was with the British forces and stationed in London. He came to the pollution ecology class at Trent University in October this year to tell his story. The students were shocked and became informed. They and he are adamant that this must not happen again. I share their sentiment. Will Canadians learn from history, or sadly, repeat it? It would be so unnecessary.

Tom Hutchinson teaches environmental and resource studies and biology at Trent University.