Way back in 1662,John Evelyn,a brilliant Englishman known for his detailed diaries,wrote about disastrous effects of coal-burning on the city of London .In it,he described an _ scene of smog.air filled with "Columns and Clouds of Smoke''given out by small industries and residences that burned coal for fuel. I found the description in the 2003 book When Smoke Ran like Water,by epidemiologist and environmental advocator Devra Davis.In it,Davis looks back at several historic pollution events and their disastrous effect on human human health-and at how these phenomena were often Ignored or even actively covered up by then people in charge at that time. As Davis points out,John Evelyn was ahead of his time when writing about how London's polluted air affected  the well-being of its residents.It wasn't  until nearly 300 years later,after what became well-known as the Great Smog of 1952,that the government began to address the problem in a systematic way. For four days.Between December 5th"and 9th",due to all accident of the weather pattern,the city was buried in a heavy fog .People were still burning coal for fuel,and low-grade coal at that time, because 0f wartime condition.A temperature inversion trapped the smoke from the city's fires, creating a black cloud in which people could barely find their way down the most familiar streets Some tried to protect themselves,but most people simply went about their business. But l952's fog was far worse than any other in memory.In the same week of the previous year, 1852 people had died in London;inl952,that number was 4703 And the deaths didn't stop when the weather changed and the fog lifted.Davis and her colleagues analyzed data from the next several months and found that about 13000 more people died between December and March than one would have predicted from historical averages Many of them died of pneumonia .The government,she writes.Tried to blame a bad flu season.Her detailed analysis found that explanation simply did not pan out. Davis writes that even today in this country ,we still have not completely absorbed the lessons of similar events.Sixty years the killer fog lifted in London,people are dying preventable deaths and suffering life.changing illnesses,simply because they must breathe the air of the cities where they live One of the reasons for the Great Smog of l952wasthat----
people burned wood for fuel a forest fire created a black cloud over the city the government ignored the smog most people went abouttheirbusine00