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AIR POLLUTION
LONDON-In December 1952, an acrid yellow smog settled on this city and killed thousands of people. The catastrophe, known as the "Big Smoke," was a turning point in efforts to clean up polluted air in cities across the Western world. It has taken half a century, though, for some of the fog to clear around the death toll from the roiling sulfurous clouds. New research suggests that the UK. government might have underestimated the number of smog-related deaths by a factor of 3.
Experts agree that the foul fog, which descended on London for a weekend in December 1952, killed roughly 4000 people that month alone. But researchers are now sparring over the cause of death of another 8000 Londoners in January and February 1953. Fresh analyses, debated at a conference here earlier this week to mark the 50th anniversary of the Big Smoke, suggest that these people succumbed to delayed effects of the smog or to lingering pollution. Other analyses insist that many of the "excess" deaths in early 1953 were caused by influenza, a view that the government...