FIFTY YEARS AGO, on 5 December 1952, Londoners received a rude awakening. They opened their curtains to find a choking dark cloud hanging over their city: a corrosive cocktail of fog mixed with smoke and gas from domestic fires and power stations. By a quirk of the weather the smog stayed put for the next four days, and that week there were more deaths in London than at the height of the cholera epidemic of 1866. Some 4000 people died of bronchitis after inhaling a concoction of smoke particles and acid that inflamed the lining of their lungs.
Until that…
