Air Pollution and The Great London Smog

[gilster]

"More people died in 2002 from passive smoking at work in the UK than were killed by the Great London smog of 1952"

James Repace

Air Pollution, and The Great London Smog

[Rose]

The Great London Smog
http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/environm ... ars_on.pdf

Thanks to whoever first posted this link on the Doctor's blog.

Fear of political embarrassment led to government cover up of link between air
pollution and lung cancer

"Delegates attending an international conference in London today to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Great London Smog of 1952, which caused an estimated 12,000 deaths, will hear how governments from the late 50s onwards deliberately downplayed the huge threat to public health caused by air pollution, and sought to shift the blame firmly onto cigarette smoking instead"
http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/news/2002/smogpollution.html

Secret plot to play down risks of air pollution
"Official documents unearthed by a scientific historian reveal that the Medical Research Council (MRC), which had just begun to establish the link between lung cancer and smoking, was asked to modify public statements about air pollution after intervention from the Government"
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 10356.html

Anti-smoking agenda 'caused air pollution problem to be obscured'

"Governments concealed the huge threat to public health caused by air pollution in the wake of the great London smog 50 years ago, and attempted to shift all the blame on to cigarette smoking, a medical historian will allege today.
While gradually there came to be no doubt of the deaths and disease caused by cigarettes, it suited governments for political reasons that the focus should remain firmly on smoking"

"An estimated 12,000 people died from the effects of the smog, but there was a shift in the public health agenda from the 1950s onwards towards the individual taking responsibility for his or her own health"
"It was pointed out that individuals could avoid the dangers of smoking but not those of pollution
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2002/dec ... ing.uknews

The Killer Fog of '52
"Fifty years ago this month, a toxic mix of dense fog and sooty black coal smoke killed thousands of Londoners in four days. It remains the deadliest environmental episode in recorded history."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... yId=873954


50 years after the great smog, a new killer arises

"To cover up the true extent of the smog disaster the government invented an influenza epidemic. In fact research has shown there was no epidemic and that the thousands more people who continued to die for the next four months did so because of the air pollution."

"In 1950 there were 4m vehicles registered in Britain, half of them cars; now there are 28m vehicles, 85% of them cars. Coal provides only 15% of energy for home heating"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,4557 ... 26,00.html

Experts prove link between pollution and damage to lungs
"URBAN smog damages the lungs of children and could cause asthma, says the first study to confirm a widely suspected, but never proven link between pollution and breathing problems."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... lungs.html

[Rose]

The Smog of London

"Being born at the start of 1949, I have quite strong and frightening memories of the Great Smog in England of 1952 in which at least 4,000 people died as a direct result of the appalling weather. Most of these fatalities were the very young, the old and people with breathing or heart problems. At three years old I suppose I was lucky!! Living in London, with its traffic and population density, it was probably one of the worst hit areas. I remember being frightened to go out because trotting alongside my mother, holding her hand, I couldn’t see her face as I looked up. You could hear people and traffic but not see anything until it was just in front of your nose. I recall too, my Uncle being stranded as all the buses had stopped running and he couldn’t get home"
http://www.hotelara.com/england/2008/01 ... of-london/

Why the Great Smog of London Was Anything but Great
"
In early December 1952, a great mass of cold air moved off the English Channel, draped itself over London like an icy comforter and then simply stayed put.

Trying to keep warm, Londoners piled extra coal into their fireplaces, sending plumes of black, sooty smoke into the air that mixed with clouds of exhaust from factories and coal-burning power plants. But instead of rising into the atmosphere and dispersing, the smoke stayed close to the ground, trapped by the cold air above.

Over the next five days, a city already famous for its smog experienced the worst air pollution it had ever seen. A thick haze hovered over the streets, penetrating homes and offices. Public transportation nearly ground to a halt, and at night the visibility was so poor that some parts of London became unnavigable. Indoor concerts were canceled because the audiences could not see the stage."
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... A9659C8B63

Toxicologic and Epidemiologic Clues from the Characterization of the 1952 London Smog Fine Particulate Matter in Archival Autopsy Lung Tissues
http://www.ehponline.org/members/2003/6114/6114.pdf

"Those who were caught outside in the fog found their skin and clothing caked with filthy particles. Buses inched their way through the murk, their drivers navigating by hanging out of their cab windows, their windscreens blacked out by a film of slime. By Friday night, the number of respiratory cases admitted to hospital had doubled. But the gloom made the work of the ambulance service all but impossible.

At the Smithfield Show at Earls Court, where the fog had seeped into the prize cattle's quarters, many animals were taken sick, just as they had in the great fog of 1873. Thirteen had to be destroyed, and autopsies later showed that the animals had suffered from severe inflammation of the airways in their lungs."

"The fog did not lift until 10 December. The government's interim report on the episode showed that there had been some 12,000 deaths as a result of the severe conditions. Then the 'spin doctors' of the day moved in. A cut-off date of 20 December was imposed, and at a stroke, the death toll was slashed to 4,000 in the final report issued nearly a year after the event. The Conservative government issued millions of flimsy masks as a measure against future disasters, although its own experts had informed it that the masks were worse than useless. The death tolls in several subsequent heavy fogs served only to prove the experts right." http://www.staffs.ac.uk/schools/science ... /fog6.html

The fog and filthy air
In reality, there was something that might have been more than a gesture. The offer from an American tobacco company to donate 100,000 masks that used new filter technology was turned down, for fear that the company might later advertise its cigarette filters as “so good they keep out London smog”.
http://www.hero.ac.uk/sites/hero/uk/res ... ir3240.cfm



Great Smog is history, but foul air still kills
"Other researchers have found evidence that pollution from diesel engines is linked to reduced head growth in unborn children, kidney damage and restricted sexual development"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/nov/2 ... tics.waste

Pollution 'causes cancer deaths'
"One in ten deaths from lung cancer in the UK may be linked to air pollution, an expert has said.
The finding adds to growing concerns that the threat to public health posed by air pollution may have been overlooked as many scientists chose to focus on smoking instead"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2557617.stm

Discovering environmental cancer: Wilhelm Hueper, post-World War II epidemiology, and the vanishing clinician's eye.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagere ... dex=7#page

[Rose]

Are Diesels More Dangerous than Cigarettes as a Cause of Lung Cancer?

"The real cause of lung cancer, according to another Oxford research scientist, Dr. Kitty Little, is diesel fumes. And the evidence here is much more persuasive. It includes the facts that:

tobacco smoke contains no carcinogens, while diesel fumes contain four known carcinogens;
that lung cancer is rare in rural areas, but common in towns;
that cancers are more prevalent along the routes of motorways;
that the incidence of lung cancer has doubled in non-smokers over past decades;
and that there was less lung cancer when we, as a nation, smoked more.
Pointing out that there has been evidence for over 40 years that smoking does not cause lung cancer, Dr Little says:

"Since the effect of the anti-smoking campaign has been to prevent the genuine cause from being publicly acknowledged, there is a very real sense in which we could say that the main reason for those 30,000 deaths a year from lung cancer is the anti-smoking campaign itself".
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/diesel ... ancer.html

Living Close to Freeways Decreases Lung Development

"Nonstatistically significant decreases also were found among children living at intermediate ranges from a freeway suggesting a dose response relationship. Such effects were not found for other large roads. There were significant independent negative effects of individual combustion-related pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide, acid vapor, particulate matter less than 2.5 and 10 microns, and elemental carbon (soot), but not with concentrations of ozone. The authors conclude that local exposure to freeway traffic emissions has adverse effects on development of lung function of children, independent of regional air quality and perhaps resulting in decreased attained lung function in adulthood"
http://aapgrandrounds.aappublications.o ... ll/18/6/67

City traffic fumes 'can cause heart attacks'
"People living in big cities are “breathing in an oil spill” every day because of air pollution that can have significant effects on cardiovascular health, scientists said today."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 389896.ece

Carbon in Airway Macrophages and Lung Function in Children

"In this study, we sought to determine the association between the carbon content of airway macrophages and lung function in a group of healthy children and the association between carbon content and variables that may affect individual exposure — such as exercise, body-mass index,sex, and levels of PM10 derived from vehicle traffic at or near the home address"
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/ful ... a72c36edef

Exposure to Traffic and the Onset of Myocardial Infarction

"Results An association was found between exposure to traffic and the onset of a myocardial infarction within one hour afterward (odds ratio, 2.92; 95 percent confidence interval, 2.22 to 3.83; P<0.001). The time the subjects spent in cars, on public transportation, or on motorcycles or bicycles was consistently linked with an increase in the risk of myocardial infarction."
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/351/17/1721

Effects of Ethanol Versus Gasoline Vehicles on Cancer and Mortality in the United States
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jaco ... ST0207.pdf

[gilster]

Second Hand Wood Smoke

http://www.des.state.nh.us/ard/smoke.htm
~snip~

Wood Smoke vs. Cigarette Smoke

Although many people associate tobacco smoke with certain health risks, research indicates that second hand wood smoke has potentially even greater ability to damage health. A comparison between tobacco smoke and wood smoke using electron spin resonance revealed quite startling results (Rozenberg 2001, Wood Smoke is More Damaging than Tobacco Smoke). Tobacco smoke causes damage in the body for approximately 30 seconds after it is inhaled. Wood smoke, however, continues to be chemically active and cause damage to cells in the body for up to 20 minutes, or 40 times longer.

Some of the components in wood smoke are free radicals, which steal electrons from the body, leaving cells unstable or injured. Some of these cells may die, while others may be altered and take on different functions. These changes lead to inflammation, which causes stress on the body. EPA researchers suggest that the lifetime cancer risk from wood stove emissions may be 12 times greater than the lifetime cancer risk from exposure to an equal amount of cigarette smoke. (Rozenberg 2001, What's in Wood Smoke and Other Emissions).

[Rose]

"More people died in 2002 from passive smoking at work in the UK than were killed by the Great London smog of 1952"

James Repace

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2925633.stm

[gary k]

'Passive smoking 'killing workers'
Passive smoking at work kills three people every day, according to research.

Study was carried out by James Repace, who has previously conducted research into passive smoking for the California Department of Health.

" More people died in 2002 from passive smoking at work in the UK than were killed by the Great London smog of 1952"
James Repace
............................................

http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/news/2002/smogpollution.html

"Delegates attending an international conference in London today to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Great London Smog of 1952, which caused an estimated 12,000 deaths.
...........................

The Killer Fog of '52
"Fifty years ago this month, a toxic mix of dense fog and sooty black coal smoke killed thousands of Londoners in four days. It remains the deadliest environmental episode in recorded history."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... yId=873954
......................................
Not only is Repace comparing apples to horse-crap, the antis go along with it.

It is no wonder that people do not believe what they read in the news when such crap is published without question!!

3 deaths per day would be about 1,100 per year for the whole country.

The Great London Smog of 1952, which lasted 4 days(not one year),and effected about 1/7th of the UK's population, killed about 12,000.

If the 'Great Smog' had lasted for 365 days and covered the whole country about 7.5 million might have died!!

This is about 6,800 times the claimed deaths from SHS exposure at work.

Repace is a shameless lying scum and any newspaper that publishes his propaganda without disclaimer should be put out of business.

[Rose]

Creative Epidemiology

Numbers That "Sing"
Tobacco control advocates can develop motivating messages by presenting statistics in ways that convey scientific truths and also move an audience emotionally. This technique has been called "creative epidemiology" or "social math"—mathematics applied for a social purpose
http://strategyguides.globalink.org/guide01_07.htm

[Rose]

New EPA standards to relax reporting of toxic pollution

"Following a change earlier this week in federal pollution regulations, a number of Washington companies won't have to report the level of toxic chemicals they discharge into the ground, water or air. The Environmental Protection Agency eased requirements, effective January 2007, that factories report the amount of toxic chemicals they release. The EPA says the changes should encourage companies to cut releases of toxic chemicals because it would spare them paperwork if they do."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/l ... ic23m.html

[Rose]

Damaging Effects Of Cigarette Smoke Mimicked By Newly Detected Air Pollutant

"A previously unrecognized group of air pollutants could have effects remarkably similar to harmful substances found in tobacco smoke, Louisiana scientists are reporting in a study scheduled for presentation at the 236th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. Inhaling those pollutants exposes the average person up to 300 times more free radicals daily than from smoking one cigarette, they added."
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/118531.php

[Rose]

Why Diesel Particulates Cause Cardiovascular Disease

"The thesis also addressed the question of whether exposure to diesel exhaust can affect the vascular function in a group of healthy individuals 2 and 6 hours after exposure. In this group exposure to diesel exhaust decreased two important and complementary blood-vessel functions: the regulation of the width of the blood vessels and the body’s own ability to dissolve blood clots (fibrinolysis). What’s more, the study illuminated the late course of events involved in the blood-vessel effects triggered by diesel exhaust in healthy individuals in the test. As much as 24 hours after their exposure to exhaust, the capacity of their blood vessels to expand was disturbed. Moreover there were signs of systemic inflammation, measured as an increase in inflammatory markers in the blood."

"The dissertation clarifies previously unknown mechanisms that can explain why air pollution in particulate form causes heart attacks, stroke, and increased mortality. It shows that diesel exhaust cause a rapid deterioration of the function of blood vessels that persists as long as 24 hours after exposure. The EKG findings in heart patients indicate acute heart effects that are consistent with increased risk of heart attack in connection with exposure to traffic."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 114550.htm

[Rose]

Tollbooth Ventilation System Effective in Protecting Workers from Traffic Air Pollution

"Although there is the potential for tollbooth workers at the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel to be exposed to high levels of cancer-causing air toxins emitted from the thousands of vehicles that pass under their nose, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that the tollbooth ventilation system was effective in keeping air toxins out of the tollbooth and away from the workers"

“Tollbooth facilities represent a potential worst-case scenario for occupational exposure to mobile source-related air pollution, as these employees spend a majority of their shift within an arm’s length of thousands of vehicles emitting a wide range of toxic pollutants. Yet, little has been done to evaluate worker exposure and the protection afforded by the indoor environment,”

“It is wonderful to discover that the tollbooth environment is doing what it is designed to do—protect workers from the hazardous environment in which they would otherwise be immersed"
http://www.rxpgnews.com/research/enviro ... 1405.shtml


SMOKERS have been left fuming over signs banning them from having a cigarette as they drive under the River Tyne.
http://www.newsguardian.co.uk/latest-ne ... 3560135.jp

[Rose]

Dirty Diesel

Michael Abramson: "The lungs of city dwellers are much dirtier than the lungs of rural dwellers. So that if a post mortem examination is performed, you actually see the black deposits on the outside of the lungs of city dwellers and also in the lymph glands in the middle of the chest.

And this is true, even in people who haven’t worked in a coal mine or haven’t smoked. It’s simply the effect of breathing in fine particles over the years of a lifetime.
Diesel vehicles are a major source of fine particles. We tend to measure them by their size in thousandths of a millimetre, so they really are quite small, and the two fractions that are most widely discussed are what’s called PM-10, that’s particulate matter with a diameter less than 10-thousandths of a millimetre, and PM-2.5 which is the fraction where the diameter is less than 2-1/2 thousandths of a millimetre. And for the PM-10 fraction, we know that about 75% of that comes from diesel exhaust, 75% that’s contributed by mobile sources"

"Diesel exhaust is a chemical cocktail of about 450 different compounds. At least 40 are toxic contaminants like arsenic, benzine, cadmium, dioxins, toluene and formaldehyde.

Even the two most carcinogenic chemicals ever discovered, 3-nitrobenzanthrone and 1,8-dinitropyrene, are found in diesel exhaust, especially from engines working under heavy load."
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/hel ... 838424.htm


"Black carbon is a major component of inhalable particulate matter (particulate matter <10 µm in aerodynamic diameter [PM10]) directly emitted from the combustion of fossil fuels."
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/ful ... a72c36edef

A VIEW FROM THE OTHER SIDE
Presented to: TIME Magazine
By Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.
Date: July 7, 1970

"Dr. Duane Carr-Professor of Surgery at
the.University of
Tennessee College of Medicine, said this:
"Smoking does not discolor the lung.

Dr. Victor Bubler, Pathologist at St. Joseph
Hospital in Kansas
City: "I have examined thousands of lungs both grossly
and microscopically. I cannot tell you from examining a
lung whether or not its former host had smoked.
"I state flatly, unequivocably and emphatically
that cigarette smoke will not turn the lung black.

Dr. Sheldon Sommers, Pathologist and Director of
Laboratories at Lenox Hill Hospital, in New York:
it is not possible grossly or microscopically, or
in any other way known to me, to distinguish between the lung
of a smoker or a nonsmoker. Blackening of lungs is from carbon
particles, and smoking tobacco does not introduce carbon
particles into the lung."

"It would thus appear that at best this claim is
not scientifically
supportable and at worst, that it is another
deliberate attempt to frighten
people"

http://www.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/bat ... /11461.txt

[Rose]

The consequences of the deception

Stigma, shame, and blame experienced by patients with lung cancer:
qualitative study

"Doctors as well as friends and family seemed to assume that a patient’s lung cancer was caused by smoking even if he or she
had stopped smoking years ago or never smoked.
One man, despite never smoking, recalled negative attitudes at the ospital
when he had his operation:
I think cancer does have a stigma attached to it. . . I think all lung cancer patients are stigmatised because of smoking. . . When I went to see an oncologist for further treatments because I’d had an operation and I’d had half of my left lung removed, I asked them what he thought had caused it and he just laughed and said,
“That’s obvious, through smoking.”

And my wife who was with me at the time, and we’ve been together since we were 14, she just said, “Well he’s never smoked.” So right away what annoyed me as well as that, on my medical records I’m classed as a smoker and every time I ever went for review after that they would ask me, “Are you still smoking?” because that’s down there. And no matter how I told them, I’d say, “Look I don’t want that on there, I never smoked,”
http://www.dipex.org/documents/papers/S ... 0blame.pdf

[Rose]

Microscopic Pollution May Trigger Heart Attacks And Strokes By Spurring Blood Clots

"It was a murder mystery playing out in major cities across the country and perplexing scientists. Thousands of people were dying from strokes and heart attacks within 24 hours of a spike in microscopic pollution -- tiny particles that spew from the exhaust of diesel trucks, buses and coal-burning factories."

"The study identifies how these tiny pieces of soot -- called particulate matter air pollution -- kill people at risk and tells how they can protect themselves from these pollution-related strokes and heart attacks"

"The study found that lungs inflamed by the pollution secrete a substance, interleukin-6, which causes an increased tendency for blood to coagulate or clot. This raises the risk of a fatal heart attack or stroke in people with cardiovascular disease such as coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure or a history of stroke."

"This is a critical missing piece of the puzzle that has eluded scientists for decades,"
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 130738.htm

"Particulate matter pollution is highest near expressways or truck routes. It's hard for commuters to escape. People are exposed to the pollution inside a car (even with the windows rolled up), a train or walking outdoors, Mutlu said. The only safe location with lower levels is indoors"
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/ ... mutlu.html

However

Carbon monoxide inhibits IL-17-induced IL-6 production through the MAPK pathway in human pulmonary epithelial cells

"As a cytoprotective and anti-inflammatory gaseous molecule, carbon monoxide (CO) may also regulate IL-17-induced inflammatory responses in pulmonary cells"
http://ajplung.physiology.org/cgi/conte ... 289/2/L268

"PUFA’s do make platelets less "sticky"".
http://www.heartpoint.com/Choltreatment.html

So if the hapless commuter can get to his local overly smoky bar in time, he may benefit from the anti inflammatory carbon monoxide, the vasodilating airborn nicotinic acid and solanesol (PUFA) and possibly not have his imminent heart attack.


Two can play at this game.....