Trafalgar Square during the Great London Smog of 1952. Photo © TopFoto / The Image Works.

This Sunday is Earth Day, an annual event started by a bipartisan group of citizens and congressional representatives in 1970 to highlight the need for a healthier environment and the importance of legislative protections.

Along the mighty Hudson—beautiful, but still contaminated

Growing up just north of New York City, along one of the most beautiful but contaminated sections of the Hudson River, I’ve seen up close the effects of industrial pollution before environmental protections were put in place. In addition to producing electrical wire, cables, munitions, and other products, the factories that lined my town’s waterfront for much of the 20th century were also responsible for extensively contaminating the surrounding area with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and petroleum hydrocarbons.

For many decades, the environmental damage caused by such industry was accepted as the price of progress. Raw sewage and oil slicks in the waters of the Hudson were not unusual sights, and relatives tell stories of a popular spot along the river, from which swimmers in the 1960s would emerge covered in the dye produced—and dumped—by a nearby riverfront factory. Most of these businesses closed by the 1970s, but the environmental damage remains: remediation on the town waterfront continues today, nearly 30 years after it was declared a Superfund site.

The pollution stopped for a reason

Although various factors contributed to the closing of these factories, it’s not a coincidence that their pollution stopped in the 1970s—a decade that saw an unprecedented number of environmental regulations enacted. In 1970 alone:

  • President Richard Nixon signed into law a significant amendment to the Clean Air Act of 1963,  authorizing the development of comprehensive federal and state regulations to limit emissions from both stationary (industrial) sources and mobile sources.
  • the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established.
  • the first Earth Day event was organized.

The environmental consciousness that led to the passage of several significant environmental protection laws in the 1970s was in part the result of growing awareness about poor air quality events, such as the more frequent occurrence of smog in New York City and Los Angeles, and their detrimental effect on human health.

The hard lessons of the Great London Smog of 1952

Extreme pollution isn’t a thing of the past. We are currently hearing about, and seeing powerful photos from, countries like India and China that are being forced to take radical steps to curtail urban pollution after the world has watched the problems resulting from unregulated pollution reach crisis proportions.

But we shouldn’t forget that such crises have occurred closer to home, and that their effects on human health have been signifcant and lasting. During the Great London Smog of 1952, London was blanketed in a lethal haze that caused such poor visibility that schools and businesses closed and transportation came to a standstill. The smog lasted for five days, and its health effects, as described by Barbara Polivka in this month’s Environments & Health column, “The Great London Smog of 1952,” “were immediate, especially in terms of respiratory and cardiac problems”:

 . . . hospitalizations increased 48% for the week ending December 9, 1952, and admissions for respiratory diseases increased by 163%. During and after the fog, there was a high correlation between the use of emergency beds by people who had cardiac and respiratory diseases and the previous days’ sulfur dioxide concentration levels.

This environmental disaster led to the death of up to 12,000 people, and its health impact was not limited to the immediate aftermath of this event. The article also points to recent research detailing startling long-term effects of this period of exposure on asthma rates among children born within a year before or or after the event.

Environmental regulations in U.S.—now under threat

Polivka notes that “dangerous air quality events continue to occur [today] and clean air regulations are increasingly under threat.” The current administration has sought to cut the EPA’s budget and reduce oversight of industry pollution through a number of strategies. Yet we know that environmental laws have been effective. As Polivka notes, the U.S. Clean Air Act has been associated with a reduction in infant mortality rates and the incidence of leukemia and skin cancer, respiratory diseases, and myocardial infarction, among other benefits.

This Earth Day, and every day, she argues, we need to make the link between environmental and human health more visible:

“Nurses should utilize grassroots strategies, such as social media and local media, and clearly articulate that clean air and health go hand in hand.”