The Great London Smog
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 14 December 2017
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Thousands died as a thick polluted fog engulfed London in 1952. People with respiratory and cardiovascular conditions were most at risk. The smog was a combination of pollution from millions of coal home fires and freezing fog. Unusual atmospheric conditions trapped the pall over the city for four days. The civil disaster changed Britain. Two years later, the government passed the Clean Air Act to reduce the use of smoky fuels such as coal. Alex Last speaks to Dr Brian Commins, who worked for the Medical Research Council's Air Pollution Unit set up at St. Bartholomew's hospital in London in the 1950s. Photo: A London bus conductor is forced to walk ahead of his vehicle with a flare to guide it through the smog, 9th December 1952. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 1:04.7 | sounds. Hello and thank you for downloading the witness podcast from the |
| 1:09.0 | BBC World Service with me Alex Last and today we take you back to December 1952 and a civil disaster |
| 1:16.8 | that changed Britain. In just one week thousands died when London was entombed in a thick pall of pollution and fog, which became known as the great smog. |
| 1:29.0 | Ordinary fog does little half, but smog, a mixture of smoke and fog, has become one of the greatest mass murderers of modern times. |
| 1:38.0 | Every year railways, factories and private homes exude 2.5 million tons of smoke. In December 1952, |
| 1:44.1 | 1952, London experienced one of its worst smogs in living memory. |
| 1:49.5 | The smoke began on a Friday. It was black and sometimes it was yellowish and it was |
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