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The Great Smog -- A terrible loss -- A look back -- Pea soupers -- December 5, 1952 -- Impossible to see -- Filthy air -- Sickened by the smog -- Illness and death -- The Great Smog lifts -- The clean air act -- London's air today -- Fixing the future

Since the prolonged, severe smog that blanketed many Chinese cities in first months of 2013, living in smog has become "normal" to most people living in mainland China. This has not only caused serious harm to public health, but also resulted in massive economic losses in many other ways. Tackling the current air pollution has become crucial to China's long-term economic and social sustainable development. This paper aims to find the causes of the current severe air quality and explore the possible solutions by reviewing the current literature, and by comparing China's air pollution regulations to that of the post London Killer Smog of 1952, in the United Kingdom (UK). It is hoped that China will learn the lesson from the UK, and decouple its economic growth from the detrimental impact of environment. Policy suggestions are made.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Introduction -- Part 1 Warning signs: from medieval London to pea-soupers -- 1 Early explorers -- 2 Warning signs ignored -- Part 2 The battle begins: twentieth-century damage -- 3 The great smog -- 4 The madness of lead in petrol -- 5 Ozone, the pollutant that rots rubber -- 6 Acid rain and the particles that form in our air -- 7 A tale of six cities -- Part 3 The battle grounds of today: modern problems in 95 a modern world -- 8 A global tour in a polluted world -- 9 Counting particles and the enigma of modern air pollution -- 10 VW and the tricky problem with diesel -- 11 Wood-burning - the most natural way to heat my home? -- 12 The wrong transport -- 13 Cleaning the air -- Part 4 Fighting back: the future of our air -- 14 A conclusion: what happens next? -- 15 Epilogue: Reasons to be hopeful -- References -- Acknowledgements -- Index.

• An estimated 12,000 U.K. nonsmokers die annually from secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure at home, at work, and in social venues. In fact, SHS pollution now causes as many deaths annually as did the great London Smog 50 years ago and triple the annual number of road deaths from traffic accidents. • Within the at-work category, data is sufficient to calculate risks for three subgroups: about 900 office workers, 165 bar workers, and 145 manufacturing workers are estimated to die from passive smoking each year in the U.K. That's more than three deaths a day in these three categories alone. • For manufacturing workers, three-fold as many are estimated to die from passive smoking than work-related deaths from all other causes. 17% of bar workers are estimated to die from passive smoking at current exposure levels. The SHS-caused deaths among office workers adds an estimated 9% to the total occupational mortality from all causes in all occupations. • Recent U.S. and Canadian measurements show that during smoking, secondhand smoke accounts for about 90% of the fine-particle air pollution levels and 95% of the airborne carcinogens in hospitality venues. • Under the hospitality-industry-sponsored Public Places Charter on Smoking, which promotes ventilation as a control for secondhand smoke, it is estimated that five of every 100 bar workers would die from workplace passive smoking, yielding 66 deaths per year. • Engineering half-measures, proposed in the Charter, were evaluated by modelling and compared with air quality measurements in Canadian and U.S. venues. These methods clearly show that the Charter-specified air exchange rate would create an air pollution hazard, violating the daily U.K. air quality standard for particulate air pollution by three-fold. • Attempts to control the toxic and carcinogenic properties of secondhand smoke by ventilation are futile, requiring tornado-strength rates of air flow. • The intent of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, which places a general duty of care for employers to provide a safe working environment, is not being satisfied for passive smoking. Without an Approved Code of Practice (ACoP) or legislation to ensure smoke-free workplaces, nonsmoking workers will continue to die needlessly.

This book brings together the methods, models and formulae used for estimating air pollution concentrations in urban areas.From the Foreword The visible effects of pollution in most cities in the developed countries have been reduced dramatically in the past thirty years. This has been achieved to a large extent by the replacement of most of the low-level sources, which burnt raw coal, by more modern appliances using gas, electricity or low-sulphur oil. The killer smog of 1952 could not be repeated unless there were to be a massive return to old-fashioned heating methods, due, for example, to excessive environmental constraints being applied to the more modern energy sources. It is important, therefore, to judge the impact of a new source in terms of its effect on the pattern of existing sources. One should also consider the environmental consequences of rejecting the new installation and examine the alternatives--that its product may either be denied to the community at large, produced elsewhere or produced using existing facilities. These facilities are probably less efficient and may therefore produce more pollution per unit of product than the new plant would. An objective, quantitative, urban-air-pollution model is clearly an essential component in such a decision-making process. Dr. Benarie has produced a distillation of existing modelling techniques which will, I hope, become the launching pad for many future models. As each city is unique, it will need its own tailor-made model, drawing on the best and the most appropriate techniques developed previously. Agreement with observations is the only real test of validity, because the physics and chemistry are so complicated that theoretical arguments are reduced to the role of assisting in the best formulation of the problem. Numerical precision must always rely on measurement. This is the approach that Dr. Benarie has adopted.--David J. Moore, Central Electricity Research Laboratires, Leatherhead, Surrey, UK.

Killer airbags -- Terrible trade-off -- Flying the friendly skies? -- The mystery of wealth -- Sex, booze, and drugs -- Expanding waistlines -- Is water different? -- Slave redemption in Sudan -- Choice and life -- Smoking and smuggling -- Bankrupt landlords, from sea to shining sea -- Rationing health care -- The effects of the minimum wage -- Heavenly highway -- Contracts, combinations, and conspiracies -- Coffee, tea, or tuition-free? -- Keeping the competition out -- The perils of product differentiation -- Raising less corn and more hell -- Killer cars and the rise of the SUV -- Crime and punishment -- The graying of America -- Frankenfoods -- The trashman cometh -- Bye, bye, bison -- Smog merchants -- Greenhouse economics -- Free trade, less trade, or no trade? -- The $750,000 steelworker -- A farewell to jobs -- The rise of the dragon.

Maverick environmental writers William J. Kelly and Chip Jacobs follow up their acclaimed Smogtown with a provocative examination of China's ecological calamity already imperling a warming planet. Toxic smog most people figured was obsolete needlessly kills as many there as the 9/11 attacks every day, while sometimes Grand Canyon-sized drifts of industrial particles aloft on the winds rain down ozone and waterway-poisoning mercury in America. In vivid, gonzo prose blending first-person reportage with exhaustive research and a sense of karma, Kelly and Jacobs describe China's ancient love affai

The world's 2.5 billion poorest people - small farmers living at the far fringe of the developing world – and their billion or so slightly better off neighbors burn 10.5 billion metric tonnes (tonnes) of crop waste annually. Smoke from their fires reddens the sun, closes airports, shuts schools and governments – and kills millions of people (World Health Organization (WHO). who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1). Their fires release 16.6 billion tonnes of CO(2), and emit 9.8 billion tonnes CO(2)e, 1.1 billion tonnes of smog precursors and 66 million tonnes of PM2.5. (Akagi et al., Atmospheric Chem Physics 4039-4071, 2011; Environmental Protection Agency, epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials; Food and Agriculture Organization, FAOSTAT, http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data) [See Attachments 1–3. For details of the Attachments, please see the section below entitled "Availability of data and materials."]. No one yet has stopped the burning. Seminars, health warnings, bans, threats, jailings, shootings – nothing has worked, because not one has offered farmers a better alternative. This is the story of how Warm Heart, a small, community development NGO, learned enough about small farmers' plight to collaborate with them to develop the technology, training and social organization to mobilize villages to form biochar social enterprises. These make it profitable for farmers to convert crop waste into biochar, reducing CO(2)e, smog precursor and PM2.5 emissions, improving health and generating new local income – in short, to address the big three SDGs (1, 2 and 3) from the bottom. Warm Heart, however, wanted more; it wanted a system so appealing that it would spread by imitation and not require outside intervention. Based on what it has learned, Warm Heart wants to teach others that the knowledge to stop the smoke and improve the quality of one's life does not require outside experts and lots of money. It wants to teach that anyone can learn to create a more sustainable world by themselves. ...

Contents -- Jumping from a burning building, a mother dies, a child survives. -- Smog in China is so thick, a factory fire went unnoticed for three hours. -- There are more gun stores in America than McDonald's and Starbucks combined. -- The last jew. -- Fashionable ladies don't wear fur, they wear meat. -- A deaf boy hears first sound. -- You can be your own mummy. -- 131 passengers on the train. One fatality: the woman on the street below. -- A crowd of 30,000 wait for hours to see the last public hanging in America. -- The bus that was blitzed in Balham. -- The iceberg that sunk the Titanic. -- Hunted to near extinction, a bounty of buffalo skulls. -- Meet Robo Rat, the first living remote controlled rodent. -- The Klan on the march in Washington, 1925. -- A 150-ton boat flung like a rag doll. -- What to wear hunting bear in 19th century Siberia. -- A 70 million car crash. -- A trainee bodyguard in China gets a bottle smashed across her head. -- Out for the count. -- Win a date with a rapist serial killer. -- Fresh air is important for babies. -- After the bombs fell on Dresden. -- Better to kill yourself, than be gang-raped and murdered. -- Down the drain. -- A shower of confiscated liquor, Detroit 1929 during prohibition. -- It's not the matador's tongue. It's the bull's horn penetrating the roof of his mouth. -- Ladies who like a ladykiller. -- A home-made Columbian submarine for transporting cocaine. -- Huntington Beach, California, wasn't always Surf City. -- A survivor of the nuclear bomb test in Nevada desert, 1955. -- Rush hour in Taipei lasts all day. -- Black slaves built the White House. -- Each day in Afghanistan costs the U.S. government more than it did to build the Pentagon. -- A last kiss for a soldier, killed 23 days later by bomb shrapnel. -- Dying for a bread roll. -- The short life of Elizabeth Short

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Original Title Page -- Original Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- 1. A Brief History of Pollution -- Soiling the Garden of Eden -- Unsanitary Conditions -- Pollution and the Plague -- Dealing with Waste -- Something in the Air -- 2. The City as Source of Pollution -- Spawning Cities -- The Industrial Revolution -- The Spread of Squalor -- Taming North America -- The Birth of Smog -- 3. Why Care? Pollution, Nature and Ethics -- Should the Polluter Pay? -- Science, Environment and Romanticism -- Reactions to Reality -- 4. The First Consumer Revolution -- Climbing the Ladder of Consumption -- Creating the Demand -- From Bike to Buick -- Consumption and Population -- 5. Water Pollution and Chemical Contamination -- Not so Pure -- From the River to the Sea -- Oil and Plastics -- Toxic Chemicals -- 6. The Poisoned Atmosphere -- Acid Rain and Air Pollution -- A Climate of Change -- Climate Change and Biodiversity -- Radioactivity: The Unseen Killer -- 7. An all Consuming Passion -- The Consumer Class -- The Death of Food -- Packaging the Dream -- The Dark Side of Suburbia -- 8. Energy and Survival -- Clean Energy? -- A History of Excess -- Transports of Delight -- Dominion of the Air -- Energy and Equity -- 9. Pollution in the Making: The Example of Asia -- The March of Progress -- Acid Rain in Asia -- Dirty Water -- The Chinese Dragon Breathes Fire -- 10. The Politics of Pollution -- Citizen Power -- There Ought to be a Law Against it! -- Towards the next Millenium -- Notes and references -- Index.