The pea-souper: London fog as a chemical artifact and man-made disaster

“ There one at least could see the light of the binnacle, but last night I could not even distinguish the hand by which I guided myself along the barrack-wall. At sea a fog is a natural phenomenon. It is as familiar as the rainbow which follows a storm, it is as proper that a fog should spread upon the waters as that steam shall rise from a kettle. But a fog which springs from the paved streets, that rolls between solid house-fronts, that forces cabs to move at half speed, that drowns policemen and extinguishes the electric lights of the music-hall, that to me is incomprehensible. ”

“ The old world and the new are alike affected by such obliteration. Long ago London took the lead with fogs proverbial wholly due to smoke, fine particles of solid matter in suspension making these points of condensation about which water vapor gathers to form cloud. With the increase of smoke-emitting chimneys over the world other centres of population have followed suit till today Europe and eastern North America vie with each other as to which sky shall be the most obliterate. Even when the obscuration is not patent to the layman it is evident to the meteorologist 15 or astronomer. ”

“ White country fog, ordinary clouds, or the so-called “steam” that is seen assuming cloud forms as it issues from the spout of a tea-kettle or funnel of a locomotive, consists of minute particles of water suspended in air, as solid particles of dust are also suspended. It has been called “vesicular vapor,” on the supposition that it has the form of minute vesicles, like soap-bubbles on a very small scale, but this hypothesis remains unproven. London fog consists of similar particles, varnished with a delicate film of coal-tar, and intersprinkled with particles of soot. ”

“ The peculiar colour of the London fogs appears to be owing to the fact that, during their prevalence, the ascent of the coal smoke is impeded, and that it is thus mixed with the condensed moisture of the atmosphere. As is well known, they are often so dense as to require the gas to be lighted in midday, and they cover the town with a most dingy and depressing pall. They also frequently exhibit the peculiarity of increasing density after their first formation, which appears to be owing to the descent of fresh currents of cold air towards the lighter regions of the atmosphere. ”

“ Fogs are not only disagreeable, but very expensive, especially in fog-bound London, where they are often the cause of great loss to merchants. During the week preceding Christmas in a recent year it is estimated that as a result of foggy weather at least $50,000,000 was lost in that city, business being paralyzed for the time being. ”

“ Not only do the solid and vaporous ingredients of smoke-begrimed air—noxious compounds of carbon, sulphur, nitrogen, chlorine, and arsenic—irritate the sensitive membranes of the eyes, nose, throat and lungs, and thus aggravate or cause inflammatory diseases of these organs, or produce collapse of their sensitive tissues, or increase their susceptibility to such specific diseases as bronchitis, pneumonia and subacute forms of phthisis; but the poisonous compounds also enter the gastro-intestinal tract, and this causes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and systemic poisoning. ”

“ Any pride we may have in our surroundings rarely extends beyond our own four walls, or, if we possess them, our garden palings. We suffer our river to become an open sewer, our buildings to be defaced by soot, our streets to be disfigured by huge advertisement hoardings, and our atmosphere to be polluted by smoke.
If the pollution of the river and the air, and the existence of unwholesome courts and uninhabitable dwellings offended the aesthetic sense only, we might wisely leave their disappearance to the improving hand of Time. ”

“ The smoke-clouds of our cities influence a number of weather states which affect human conduct. The meteorological [Pg 10] conditions particularly affected are: sunshine, clouds, humidity, fogs, temperature, electrical potential and luminosity. That the smoke from factory and domestic fires, by filling the atmosphere with opaque clouds of smoke and by inducing mists and fogs, deprives the city dwellers of the luminous, vitalizing, cheering, health giving, germicidal rays of the sun, has been proved by numerous observations and tests. ”

“ I should point out that the smoke of London contains large quantities of these oils, and they, by coating the drops of mist on which they condense, give the fog that haunts our streets that peculiar richness which is so irritating and injurious to the system, and, further, by preventing the water from being again easily taken up by the air, prolong the duration of the fog. ”

“ Ernest Hart, of the Smoke Abatement Institute, fears that London will always suffer from fogs, because it is placed in a river valley, on a clay soil, and is bordered on the Essex side by low-lying lands very imperfectly drained, and on the north side by the Harrow Weald. The fogs generated—the results of damp exhalations—are greatly aggravated by the parks, most of which require draining. But if the smoke is got rid of, the fogs will be much less dense. ”

“ A fog is always made by influences from below. A lowering temperature chills the air, and brings down its moisture in the shape of a gray subtle pervasive mist, that blurs the outlook, and often gathers and holds black smoke, and mean poisonous odors and gases from bog and swamp. ”

“ Fogs happen at night, when the air has been saturated with vapour during the day. When this is the case, it deposits some of its superabundant moisture in the form known in rural districts—as my Hon. Friend, the Member for the Bordesley Division, is well aware—as dew. In the Metropolis it is more familiar as fog. This process of deposition commences as soon as the capacity of the air for holding vapour is lessened by the coldness of advancing night. I think I have now answered the question of my Noble Friend fully, and, I trust, frankly. ”

“ The stillness of the autumn air breeds in London the noisome vapours of the fog; there is no wind, but, overhead, an easterly drift, which always sets in in the time of calms, condenses upon the wretched city the baleful gloom and smoke and soot from out of the pestilential East. ”

“ At sea or in the country a fog, as a rule, is white and consists of a cloud of minute water globules, of no great vertical thickness, which disperses the sunlight by repeated reflection but is fully translucent. In dust-storms and sand-storms dark or coloured fog clouds are produced such as those which are met with in the Harmattan winds off the west coast of Africa. In large towns the fog cloud is darkened and intensified by smoke, and in some cases may be regarded as due entirely to the smoke. ”

“ Quantities of smoke, vapor, dust and other offensive waste products are constantly discharged into the atmosphere of urban districts. The emanation of all this matter is so rapid that it becomes visible within a few hours whenever the purifying breezes die away, and yet the gathering gloom is not generally recognized as pollution of the air, but rather taken for a change in weather. According to the seasons, the solid particles like soot and dust will cause a haze, or encourage the formation of mist and fog, sometimes, during the winter, depriving a city for days of the life-giving sun. ”

“ The only drawback on this industrial conveniency is the darkness of its sky. The night and day are too nearly of a color. It strains the eyes to read and to write. Add the coal-smoke. In the manufacturing towns, the fine soot or blacks darken the day, give white sheep the color of black sheep, discolor the human saliva, contaminate the air, poison many plants, and corrode the monuments and buildings.
The London fog aggravates the distempers of the sky, and sometimes justifies the epigram on the climate by an English wit, "in a fine day, looking up a chimney; in a foul day, looking down one." ”

“ The density of the fog formed in common air shows what a large amount of dust is present every day in the air around us. But the particles of fog do not represent all the dust-particles in the air. If enough steam is blown into a receiver full of common air to produce a dense fog, and after the fog has settled more steam is blown in, another fog will form on the dust which still floats in the air. If this is repeated a number of times, a less dense and coarser-grained fog forms each time, till at last no fog is seen, but the condensed vapor falls as rain. ”

“ Some of the vapor of the air, on condensing, gathers on solid objects like grass, or glass; but some, as fog, floats about in the air. Really this, too, is often gathered around solid objects. Floating about in the air are innumerable bits of "dust" which you can see dancing about in the sunlight when a sunbeam enters a dark room. Some of these "dust" particles are actual dust from the road, but much of it is something else, as the pollen of plants, microbes, and the solid bits produced by the burning of wood or coal. ”

“ In a city like London or Glasgow, where a great river, fed by warm streams of water from gigantic works, passes through its centre, fogs can never be entirely obliterated, for the dust-particles in the air (often four millions and upwards in the cubic inch) will seize with terrible avidity the warm vapour rising from the river. That is the main reason why fogs cannot there be put down. Smoke is being consumed to a great extent; yet we find particles of sulphur remaining, which seize the warm vapour and form fogs dense enough to check all traffic. ”

“ What, it may be asked, is the cause of the London fog? These fogs, which occur generally in the winter time, are occasioned thus: some current of air, being suddenly cooled, descends into the warm streets, forcing back the smoke in a mass towards the earth. But, my Noble Friend might ask, why are there not fogs every night? ”

“ Now this sort of confusion or compromise is as local as a London fog. A London fog is tolerable in London, indeed I think it is very enjoyable in London. There is a beauty in that brown twilight as well as in the clear skies of the Orient and the South. But it is simply horribly dangerous for a Londoner to carry his cloud of fog about with him, in the crystalline air about the crags of Zion, or under the terrible stars of the desert. There men see differences with almost unnatural clearness, and call things by savagely simple names. ”

“ But you see the blizzard once in a generation or a century, while if you are good, or good enough to live in London, you may see a characteristic fog almost any year. It is another case in which the metropolis of the New World must yield to the metropolis of the whole world. Fog for fog, I do not say but the fog in which we left New York, on March 3, 1904, was not as perfect as our great London fog. But the New York fog was only blindingly white and the London fog blindingly black, and that is a main difference. ”

“ Aitken has shown, moreover, in an interesting paper communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, last year, that the fine dust resulting from the imperfect combustion of coal is mainly instrumental in the formation of fog; each particle of solid matter attracting to itself aqueous vapor; these globules of fog are rendered particularly tenacious and disagreeable by the presence of tar-vapor, another result of imperfect combustion of raw fuel, which might be turned to much better account at the dye-works. ”

“ It is this horrid smoke, which obscures our churches, and makes our palaces look old, which fouls our clothes, and corrupts the waters, so as the very rain and refreshing dews which fall in the several seasons, precipitate this impure vapour, which with its black and tenacious quality, spots and contaminates whatever is exposed to it. ”

“ The use of purer forms of coal, or even of gas, does not avoid them, nor even appear to diminish their number. Common salt is one of the most active fog-producers, but the products of burned sulphur exceeded in this respect all the other substances experimented upon. The density of the fog depends on the amount of fine dust in the air. If only a few particles are present, only a few fog-drops form, and they are heavy and fall like rain; if there are many, the more dust the finer are the fog-particles, and the longer they remain suspended in the air. ”

“ These dust-particles are not the motes that we see in the path of a sunbeam; for, when common air is passed through a flame, these motes disappear, but the air still remains a good medium for fogs. It is a finer kind of dust which furnishes the fog and cloud nuclei. The products of combustion are fog producers, and especially the vapor from the burning of sulphur. ”

“ Our tour ends here, but there are many more stone buildings and monuments in Washington and in other cities that may also show the effects of urban pollution and acid precipitation. However, as seen on this tour, not all of the deterioration of stone buildings is caused by acid rain. To protect our historic stone buildings and monuments, we need to limit air pollution that contributes to acid rain deterioration, and we need to develop effective maintenance and preservation procedures that will not further harm the stone. ”

“ Then in the metropolis, painting are hung in rooms were the air becomes highly vitiated by the presence of large assemblages of human beings and by the pernicious influence of gas, and this is a very prolific source of destruction to these works of art, added to which even the air of London itself has been declared by competent authorities to be very prejudicial to the preservation of paintings, owing to the excess of carbonic acid and other deleterious gases in the atmosphere ”

“ Oddly enough, more poisons are found in fog than even coal-burning altogether accounts for; the exact nature of some of the substances which are present in the atmosphere of foggy weather is a matter about which scientists themselves confess to ignorance. ”

“ As the wind changes, it fills by turns the whole country within twenty or thirty miles of London; and over this area it deposits the volatilized products of three thousand chaldrons, or nine millions of pounds of coals per day, producing peculiar effects on the country. In London this smoke is found to blight or destroy all vegetation; but, as the vicinity is highly prolific, a smaller quantity of the same residua may be salutary, or the effect may be counteracted by the extra supplies of manure which are afforded by the metropolis. ”

“ They say these chemical fumes are not unwholesome, and quote the death-rate, which is lower than any other place of the size in England. In fact, scarcely anybody dies here. They go away as soon as they begin to feel ill—perhaps that accounts for it. But those horrid chemical fumes have a great deal to answer for. They have killed the trees for miles around. It is the oaks that suffer principally. The tops are nipped first, and then they gradually die downwards till the whole tree is decayed all through. ”

“ Unsuitable constitution of the atmosphere is also a fruitful source of disease, though its effects are commoner in closed stoves and greenhouses than in the open. Nevertheless the continual exhalation of sulphurous fumes, chlorine, and other poisonous gases in the neighbourhood of manufacturing centres or of large smoky towns, volcanoes, etc., play their part in injuring plants; and excessive moisture in the form of mist, rain, etc., is also important. ”

“ A stranger to London, when the fog sets in at night, and he looks upon it for the first time, fancies his apartments filled with smoke, and begins by throwing open his doors and windows; thus making bad worse, by destroying all the warm air in the rooms. Even one well accustomed to the ins and outs of our far-stretching city is strangely deceived in distance, and the size objects assume, as they loom in dim and gigantic dimensions through the heavy fog. The gas-lamps appear as if placed three-story high, unless you stand close beneath them, for what light they emit is nearly all thrown upward ”

“ Add to these difficulties the further fact that by habit and association we have learned to base our visual estimation and discrimination of things on their appearance in broad daylight, and we begin to appreciate the baneful optical effects of the frequent obscuration of the sun by smoke clouds, by smoke-produced water clouds and fogs, and by the filling of the atmosphere with opaque particles. As stated before, particles in the air and fogs may reduce the limit of visibility from one mile to less than one city block. ”

“ It was one of those horrible fogs peculiar to London and to London only, when there is a doubly blinding nature in it, which puts the thrust-down smoke into a state of atmospheric solution, obscuring all things, and causes the oppressed eyes to tingle, smart, and fill with irrepressible tears, and blinds them to the dim objects that might perchance otherwise be visible; that compels at midday, and often all day long, a vast consumption of candles and lamp oil, gas and torches, and nearly all locomotion is brought to a standstill ”

“ As it rose, it shone over the tops of the hills, and lighted up this sea of fog, which it in a little time scattered by its heat.
Dense fogs often hanging over large cities.
Very thick fogs often hang over large cities, while all around in the country the air may be perfectly clear. London is often covered with such a fog. Sometimes it has been so dense that people could not see to do any business. ”

“ The gas is immediately lighted everywhere, and when this kind of fog remains in the upper atmospheric regions, it does not greatly affect you. It does not touch the earth, and the gas being lighted, it gives you the impression of being in the street at ten o'clock at night. Traffic is not stopped; the bustle of the city goes on as usual. The most terrible of all is the yellow fog, that the English call pea-soup. ”

“ The fog that draws down and absorbs the smoke of the housetops, causes it to hang about the streets in impenetrable density, forces it into one's eyes and down one's throat, so that one is half-blinded and quite sickened—this atmospheric abomination has been much more frequent than usual. Just before Christmas, too, there was a heavy snow-storm, and even a tolerably light fall of snow has London quite at its mercy. ”

“ His advice to me was to get out of the London fogs as quickly as possible. No one who has not suffered a London fog can imagine the terrible gloom that pervades everywhere. One can see nothing out of the windows but a dense black smoke. ”

“ Fogs are always mist. And the way to miss them is to go to the Institute of Painters in Oil. That will oil the wheels of life in this atrociously hibernal weather, and make existence in a fog enjoyable. There, in the well-warmed, pleasantly-lighted rooms, will you find countless pleasant pictures—delightful sea-subjects, charming landscapes, and amusing scenes, by accomplished painters, which will infuse a little Summer into the dull, depressing, brumous, filthy atmosphere of a weary London Winter. ”

“ In fact, when it is not blindingly thick, a London fog lends itself to the most charming effects. It caresses the prevailing commonness and ugliness, and coaxes it into a semblance of beauty in spite of itself. The rows upon rows of humble brick dwellings in the streets we passed through were flattered into cottage homes where one would have liked to live in one's quieter moods, and some rather stately eighteenth-century mansions in Stoke Newington housed one's pride the more fittingly, because of the mystery which the fog added to their antiquity. ”

“ And far, far below them the brown fog fell until it warmed into fire. Through the dense London atmosphere they could see below them the flaming London lights; lights which lay beneath them in squares and oblongs of fire. The fog and fire were mixed in a passionate vapour; you might say that the fog was drowning the flames; or you might say that the flames had set the fog on fire. Beside the ship and beneath it (for it swung just under the ball) , the immeasurable dome itself shot out and down into the dark like a combination of voiceless cataracts. ”

“ But I felt at the same time that the subject of air pollution in manufacturing towns really deserved more attention than it has generally received; for the evil is a growing one, and I believe we shall realize one day, as the result of a very costly experience, the same necessity for breathing an untainted atmosphere as we now do for drinking unpolluted drinking water, or for consuming unadulterated food. ”

“ The smoke palls of our industrial centers exert both a direct and indirect influence upon the human organism. The direct influence is due to the immediate contact of the smoke-contaminated and poison-laden air with the skin, mucous membranes and sense organs of the body. The indirect effects are traceable to the various meteorological states which are due to smoke products in the atmosphere, and which in turn directly influence the body. ”

“ Not only are these conditions, bad as they are, aggravated during foggy weather but on moderately foggy days the quantity of solid organic impurities may be increased 700% as compared with fine weather (Russell) . During grimy, opaque fogs, the conditions are still worse.
That the constant inhalation of poison-laden air, largely made up of the soot particles which abound in manufacturing cities, diminishes the potential reserve, the productive efficiency and the bodily well-being of our city dwellers by causing specific diseases, has been abundantly shown by various studies. ”

“ Less diseases are found during sunshiny than foggy or cloudy weather, while the death rate increases considerably during fogs. Thus during a November fog in Glasgow the death rate rose to 13.9 while in other Scotch towns free from fog it was only 3.3. But the increase in the mortality is not merely due to the fact that the sunless, foggy states lower the temperature and favor the growth of micro-organisms, but the water globules absorb particles of dust and acrid smoke and the toxic products of respiratory waste. (In factories dust particles become vehicles for the products of human fatigue.) ”

“ Such insidious industrial poisoning arises through the continual absorption into the lungs or stomach of small quantities of poisonous dust, gases, and vapours, during [161] constant or frequent work in an atmosphere containing such gases; poisonous liquids also, by soiling hands and food, or by penetrating the skin, can produce slow industrial poisoning. ”

“ Thus atmospheric pollution, once perceived only as a local urban-industrial problem involving people's health, is now also seen as a much more complex issue encompassing buildings, ecosystems, and maybe even public health over vast regions. During transport in the atmosphere, emissions of sulphur and nitrogen oxides and volatile hydrocarbons are transformed into sulphuric and nitric acids, ammonium salts, and ozone. ”

“ Is it possible that the highest spiritual creations of the citizens of smoke-begrimed cities are being sacrificed on the altar of commercial greed? Is it possible that, in the interests of a pseudo-economy, we are impairing the very brains of the people by permitting our breathing air to be saturated with the poisons of preventable fumes? ”