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trees, privet hedges, rhododendrons and willows), there was a considerable loss of
diversity in urban-industrial areas.
Smoke pollution
by absorbing and scattering light
was recognised to lower
sunshine levels signi
c investigations in
Leeds and Manchester suggest that they lost as much as 50 % of available sunlight
and daylight. Fogs formed readily in industrial towns and cities as the particulate
pollution (smoke and soot) provided in abundance the necessary nuclei for con-
densation and the formation of water droplets, especially at low temperatures. As a
result of the presence of the
cantly for city-dwellers. Early scienti
, fogs grew denser and became more
frequent, particularly during the winter months. An investigation undertaken on
behalf of the Meteorological Council in 1901
'
smoke nuisance
'
1903 concluded that 20 % of Lon-
-
don
s fogs were smoke induced. In cold, calm atmospheric conditions fog often
went hand-in-hand with a temperature inversion; when the air overhead was war-
mer than at ground level it acted like a lid, trapping polluted air in the streets for
long periods. Moreover, coal smoke formed a sticky
'
lm around the water droplets,
which meant that town fogs evaporated far less easily than country fogs. When
thick fogs occurred it was not unusual for the inhabitants of British and American
industrial cities to experience
'
'
, which seriously disrupted business,
transport and urban life as visibility diminished to just a few metres. 20 Reduced
sunlight, dirty air and the increase in the frequency and persistence of urban fogs
were also a threat to human health on both sides of the Atlantic.
Rickets, a disease of childhood which resulted in softened, calcium-de
night at noon
cient
bones, was caused by poor diet and insuf
cient exposure to sunlight. It was
endemic in the gloomy manufacturing towns and mining areas of northern Europe
and the United States until the 1940s. Respiratory diseases were rife where air
quality was poor, and by the turn of the twentieth century bronchitis was the biggest
single killer in Britain
s factory towns. Smoky industrial centres in Germany and
the United States also suffered in
'
ated death rates from diseases of the lungs. The
doors and windows of people
s homes were routinely kept closed to exclude soot
and smoke, which meant that urban populations
'
who spent a good deal of their
time indoors
were overexposed to tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.
Contemporary observers also noted that the same factors that in
uenced the high
incidence of rickets and respiratory diseases in large towns and cities could also
have serious psychological effects on their inhabitants. In 1913, for example,
research conducted by Dr. J.E. Wallace Wallin, as part of an investigation under-
taken by the Mellon Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, linked smoke pollution
to a wide variety of psychological problems, including:
'
chronic ennui
'
;
'
morbid
emotions
. And as
well as affecting the physical and mental well-being of city-dwellers, air pollution
was also closely connected to a perceived decline in moral standards. Drunkenness
and criminal activity were both thought to increase beneath the thickening smoke-
cloud, while many housewives simply gave up the arduous struggle to keep their
'
;
'
instability of attention
'
;
'
irritability
'
; and
'
lessened self-control
'
20
Luckin ( 2003 ), Mosley ( 2007 , 2008 ), Tarr ( 1996 ) and Stradling ( 1999 ).
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