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BOOK REVIEWS 
KILLER SMOG 
by William Wise 
Rand McNally, 1968 
Audubon/Ballantine, 1970 
180 pp., $1.25 (paper) 
If I were a World dictator — of 
course a benevolent one — I would 
require that this book be read by 
every student from junior high age 
up and by every literate adult in 
developed countries. For the bene- 
fit of every illiterate in both prim- 
itive and advanced countries, I 
would have it adapted for compul- 
sory viewing in motion pictures 
and on television. It would not, 
however, be recommended that it 
be perused by any squeamish city 
dweller during periods of air pol- 
lution such as existed in Chicago 
in several days last winter. 
“Killer Smog” has the subtitle 
“The World’s Worst Air Pollution 
Disaster.” It describes the catas- 
trophe suffered by London and its 
environs in December, 1952. The 
first third of the book is history, 
recounting many fatal smogs in 
England, the much _ publicized 
death-dealing air pollution disaster 
in the Meuse Valley in 1930, and 
a few of ours, notably in Donora, 
Pennsylvania, October 1948, where 
17 persons died and 4,000 became 
ill in this rather small coal min- 
ing city. 
The most serious killer smogs in 
the U.S.A., have been in New York 
City where there have been at 
least three, each of which has 
caused hundreds of deaths, cul- 
minating in probably the worst of 
all, Thanksgiving week-end, 1966. 
In England, where soft coal his- 
torically has been the main fuel 
for home heating, smoke was rec- 
ognized as a nuisance as early as 
the 13th century. More than three 
hundred years ago one John Eve- 
lyn authored a book, ‘Fumifug- 
lum”, usually referred to by part 
of its thirty-word subtitle “Smoke 
of London.” 
From that time on there were 
passed a succession of ineffective 
laws to control pollution, some laxly 
written and none properly en- 
forced. For example, a late 19th 
century measure specifically ex- 
empted “mining and smelting” in- 
dustries. Another set as maximum 
fines the equivalent of twenty-five 
dollars, with the possibility of an 
additional two dollars and fifty 
cents a day for non-compliance. No 
wonder a contemporary publicist 
coined the phrase, ‘“Muck Is 
Money,’ which became a popular 
slogan. 
The term “smog” appears to 
have been coined by a London 
physician in 1905, but it did not 
come into common use by British- 
ers until nearly fifty years later 
when it returned oddly enough, 
“by way of Los Angeles freeways.” 
Meanwhile, suffering Londoners 
called their pollution nuisances 
“nea soupers” or the more polite 
name, “London particulars.” 
By any name all such disasters 
and near disasters, whatever the 
specific cause of the pollution, are 
atmospheric phenomena known to 
meteorologists as “temperature in- 
versions’, which have occured in 
