Jump to content

Talk:Great Smog of London

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 14.203.207.166 (talk) at 05:03, 3 April 2018 (→‎Change Title, add facts). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Change Title, add facts

For your information, I was eleven years old at the time, living in Surrey,UK, and remember it being called "smog". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.19.133.145 (talk) 21:28, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]


The title of this article should be changed to either "London 'Big Smoke' of 1952" or "London 'Great Fog' of 1952." The term "smog" was used by few if anyone at the time. Perhaps "Killer Fog" should be added parenthetically.

From [1] (as written below) by Tim

The infamous fog of December 1952 has come to be known as 'The Great Smog'; the term 'smog' being a portmanteau word meaning 'fog intensified by smoke'. The term was coined almost half a century earlier, by HA Des Voeux, who first used it in 1905 to describe the conditions of fuliginous (sooty) fog that occurred all too often over British urban area[...]

--24.37.141.122 (talk) 16:19, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Also, the sentence "At the same time, the final conversion of London's electric trams to diesel buses was completed" needs to be attributed or deleted. Various accounts make clear that the "fog" was in fact mostly coal smoke, trapped near ground level by an inversion layer. I doubt that any reputable authority would attribute "diesel buses" as a significant cause of the London great fog.

A factor that worsened the problem: burning of low-quality high-sulfur coal for home heating in London in order to permit export of higher-quality coal, because of the country's tenuous economic situation [2] Ldemery 07:10, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No one has objected, so I have made the changes outlined above. Ldemery 05:06, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See for example: [3], [4] which use Great Smog. Tim! 08:06, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

...respiratory tract infections from hypoxia (low level of oxygenation of blood) due to mechanical obstruction of the air passages by pus arising from lung infections... — paraphrased: lung infections caused by hypoxia caused by pus caused by lung infections. Besides the fact that this statement is circular, hypoxia doesn't cause infections, microorganisms and viruses cause infections. 64.191.142.162 (talk) 18:31, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"...coal tended to be exported"???? In the 1950s the UK exported less than 5 Mton/yr of anthracite which was used exclusively in continental steel making. Power stations and railways took the next best coal. The UK's coal is mostly black as the poorer quality shallow coal had been exhausted over the centuries. Peat was still a significant fuel in the 1950s.14.203.207.166 (talk) 05:01, 3 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Lung Irritation or Inflamation

A lot of people didn't die from a lung infection, but rather a mechanical obstruction of the human breathing system by pus caused by lung irritation or inflamation; the term infection here may be misleading- (smog is not a biological agent that self-reproduce). Yes, some had infections because of the damage, but others died from other health conditions that aren't treated like an infection is treated (as a final outcome of this disaster). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.248.84.66 (talk) 23:02, 29 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rewrite and Clean up

Rewrote intro and part of "Events". Cleaned up and clarified citations and added to "further reading".Shadygrove2007 (talk) 15:11, 20 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Likely plagiarism

"into gutters and down the drains in dirty black rivulets" - this phrase can be found in a comment by 'Victor Spink' here. I'm about to research the timing and name of who inserted it, but I wanted to bring it to attention quickly here in case I get pulled away from the job.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:55, 24 October 2013 (UTC) This edit appears to be where the paragraph was introduced on 29 January 2012. Victor Spink appears to have left the same words exactly as part of a longer personal story in the comment... on February 11, 2012. Very curious. Still researching. In any event I'm going to end up removing this paragraph as unsourced but now my curiosity is really engaged as to what happened!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:03, 24 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

fix me

"According the the United Kingdom's National Weather Service," 76.117.72.131 (talk) 04:21, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Causes of deaths

It says that because of the smog, ambulance services had to be suspended. What is the proof that many of these supposed deaths weren't attributable to people who were injured or ill from unrelated diseases who were unable to seek medical care because of lack of ambulances? Or people who were injured in traffic accidents due to the reduced visibility? There must have been many, which would either mean that a substantial number of the reported deaths were not due to actual lung conditions caused by the smog, or that there must have been even more death that are not included in the count. I'd like a breakdown of the information they base these claims on. It's kind of like when there is a big blizzard, some people may freeze to death, but many more die because they have a heart attack or something and can't make it to a hospital, or starve to death because they are trapped, or asphyxiate due to snow clogging ventilation or faulty heating equipment, or are killed in traffic accidents due to the bad roads. All of these deaths are typically considered as part of the blizzards "death toll", but the blizzard didn't directly kill most of them. I see no reason that this "Great Smog" wouldn't have a similar effect..45Colt 20:09, 9 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

for solid figures showing that an atypical increase in mortalities occurred in the months after the event see the extensive references in the article itself, particularly Stone, R. 'Counting the Cost of London's Killer Smog' Science 13 Dec 2002: Vol. 298, Issue 5601, pp. 2106-2107 DOI: 10.1126/science.298.5601.2106b

Jamesmcardle 02:45, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Great Smog, Smoke, or Fog. London or 1952

I changed the lede from "Great Smog of 1952" to the article title: "Great Smog of London" or "Great Smog of 1952". What is the wp:COMMONNAME for this event? Going by dubious Google wp:OR. Quotes included in search, first number is "about" hits from search:

Anyone which to chime in or open a wp:Request for comment? Jim1138 (talk) 07:58, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have never known this event referred to by the article name until seeing it here. I've always known it as the 'great fog/smog of 1952’ (I was born in 1955). I wonder if 'great smog of London' is what Americans called it, which would account for the large number of Google hits? --Ef80 (talk) 11:52, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on Great Smog of London. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 02:32, 23 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Great Smog of London. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 01:28, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Great_Smog_of_London&oldid=833953214"