5th December 1952: The Great Smog of London begins

To maximise revenues in the aftermath of the Second World War, the British government had opted to export the country’s better-quality ‘hard’ coal and retain the more sulphurous low-grade coal for domestic consumption. Smoke from burning this coal in domestic fires to offset the particularly cold winter of 1952 combined with pollutants from Greater London’s numerous power stations, factories, and public transport to create a thick noxious blanket of smog over the city.

The thick yellow-black smog was held over London for more than four days due to the arrival of a high-pressure weather system. This caused an anticyclone that stopped the polluted air from rising into the atmosphere. Windless conditions, and London’s position in a river valley, also meant that the smog was unable to be blown away.

Visibility in the city was reduced to just a few metres, bringing public transport to a halt and forcing schools and businesses to close. Meanwhile, people across the city breathed in the toxic air and began to succumb to respiratory infections. Cattle at the Smithfield Show at Earl’s Court reportedly suffocated and, while nobody made the connection until several months after the smog lifted, estimates state that between 4,000 and 12,000 Londoners died as a direct result of breathing the polluted air.

In response the government began to rethink its policy towards air pollution and, in 1956, introduced the Clean Air Act that established ‘smoke control areas’ where only clean fuels could be burned. This precipitated a shift towards the use of cleaner coals, electricity, and gas as sources of heat.

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