40 it HOE 2A UD UsBrOrNe 4B Ww eee 
New York City, Los Angeles, 
Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis 
and some sixty other United States 
cities. All include among other 
kinds of filth, sulphur oxides, grits, 
fly ash, and_ soots, collectively 
known as particulate matter. 
In spite of seemingly every con- 
ceivable kind of warning, high- 
lighted by many smogs throughout 
the century preceding 1952, in all 
claiming thousands of lives, Lon- 
don was utterly unprepared for the 
disaster. Amazing apathy of local 
and national governments, the 
press and radio, the medical pro- 
fession and the general public — 
seen in its aftermath as_ sheer 
stupidity — was incredible. (But 
how much better prepared are 
United States’ vulnerable cities?) 
More incredible was the lack of 
information in London while the 
disaster continued. At that time a 
livestock exhibition was going on, 
and while more than 4,000 persons 
were dying or would die from the 
effects of the smog within two 
weeks, and while from 50,000 to 
100,000 others were ill, more space 
was given in newspapers and more 
time on broadcasting media to the 
deaths of some prize animals at 
the stock show than to human 
fatalities. 
More than half of “Killer Smog’’, 
under the heading “Anatomy of a 
Disaster”, relates in vivid dramatic 
detail the inconveniences, the frus- 
tration of getting about in the 
darkness and often getting lost, the 
desperation, the sickness, the. suf- 
fering, the stark struggles for life, 
and in many cases the deaths, of 
a dozen or more stricken individu- 
als. Although names of persons are 
fictitious and place names have 
been altered, the life (and death) 
histories are actual, says the 
author. 
With admirable skill he makes 
these sketches more effective by 
introducing each of these persons to 
us, and obtaining the reader’s sym- 
pathy for them, days before the 
onset of the plague. This is the 
part of the work where persons 
with queasy constitutions are ad- 
vised to proceed with discretion. 
Contrary to the common belief 
that the only persons who succumb 
in smog disasters are the very 
young, the very old, the sickly and 
those vulnerable to lung and heart 
failures, detailed are instances of 
men, young and middle aged, with 
no knowledge of any previous con- 
dition of precarious health who, 
after several hours of exertion in 
the smog, fell dead. 
Although to anyone who has 
read that far it would not seem to 
be needed, Mr. Wise closes ‘Killer 
Smog” with this warning: “In 
America the situation may be even 
more critical. The atmosphere over 
much of the eastern half of the 
country is chronically polluted. 
Every large American city suffers 
from dirty air... The citizens of 
London did not believe themselves 
to be in danger on the fifth of 
December, 1952. In a hundred 
calamity hours the great killer 
smog proved that they were wrong. 
From every appearance, a similar 
tragedy is now being prepared for 
America — and there is very little 
time to prevent it.” 
—R. M. Barron 
SONGS OF THE HUMPBACK 
WHALE 
LP Record 
Produced by Roger S. Payne 
CRM Records, $9.95 
with 38-page booklet 
The card in the leaflet of the 
record album states, “All that is 
needed for whales to lose their 
place in the world is for enough 
good people to do nothing.” The 
Whale Fund of the New York 
Zoological Society exists to insure 
