Can Delhi Learn Lessons from London’s Great Smog of 1952?

In 1952, a thick sheet of smog descended upon the city of London, reducing visibility to a mere few feet and making respiration painful and difficult. The crisis came about as the result of a bizarre weather phenomenon; an anticyclone trapped pollution in a bubble and exposed the city to its ravages for a full five days.

Fast forward 64 years, and a similar thing is happening on the other side of the world. Though there is no anticyclone to blame for the air pollution issues currently happening in India, the direness of the situation is comparable. Hopefully, the Indian government can learn from Britain’s mistakes and clear up their own airways in a similar manner.

A catastrophic event

The 5^th December 1952 is a dark day in London history. As was the custom during wintertime, families huddled around their coal fires for warmth, unminding of the vast amounts of pollution spat out into the area by the combustion of this most filthy of fossil fuels.

But whereas the particulate matter 2.5(PM2.5) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emitted by coal would normally be dissipated by wind and rain, a peculiar weather event known as an anticyclone created an inverted effect in the local climate. As a result, the contaminants were pushed down towards the ground and created a layer of toxic cloud that would linger over the city for a full five days, killing its inhabitants in the thousands.

Contemporary estimates of the total death toll fell around the 4,000-mark, which is a greater tally of civilian deaths in the London capital from a single event than at any other time. However, more recent studies indicate that the actual death toll might be as much as three times that amount.

History repeating itself?

Across the globe, the Indian capital is currently facing a similar crisis. NOx pollution over New Delhi has long been a cause for concern due to the abundance of passenger vehicles on the city’s roads. However, the recent Diwali festival has exacerbated the problem to an extreme level due to the release of thousands of fireworks around the city, which in turn has caused vast amounts of PM2.5 to be let loose in the local atmosphere.

One recent assessment of PM2.5 levels found them to be roughly 90 times higher than the “safe” level set out by the World Health Organisation (WHO), while they are also considered to be 15 times higher than the norm at this time of year.

With PM2.5 linked to a whole host of respiratory and cardiovascular complications and air pollution in general blamed for as many as 626,000 premature deaths in India each year, the situation is clearly a worrying one.

Taking a leaf out of London’s book

In the wake of that catastrophic event which claimed the lives of so many people, the UK government introduced the Clean Air Act in 1956 which outlawed the combustion of polluting fuels in “smoke control areas”.

The impact was immediate. Smog lifted visibly, green spaces returned to the city and health levels improved steadily over the next decade. The measure also acted as a touchpoint for other nations, with many industrial powers round the world following suit not long after.

While London is far from perfect in terms of its air quality levels nowadays – flexibility is the key to solving such air pollution abatement challenges – the Clean Air Act set a precedent for future change that should be echoed in India today.