Ep 185 The Great Smog of London: “Thick, drab, yellow, disgusting”

Some things just go together: peanut butter and jelly, bacon and eggs, milk and cereal, London and smog. Or at least, that’s the way things used to be until the Great Smog of 1952. (Don’t worry, the first three pairings are safe). If you’ve watched The Crown, you may remember an early episode in which a thick, noxious smog surrounded the entire city of London for days on end. People coughing, hacking, collapsing. Traffic ground to a standstill. Authorities in denial. What was actually going on in December 1952 to lead to such conditions? What was in the smog to make it so toxic? And how did this severe pollution event lead to massive changes in air quality regulations around the world? Tune in to find out all this and more (including what The Crown got wrong).

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