Clean air and pollution control are often thought to be a modern issue. Did you know that as early as 1306, King Edward the First of England enacted a pollution control law? He issued a proclamation banning the burning of sea coal because of the smoke that it caused! Even the term “smog” which is almost synonymous with pollution has a hundred-year history. It was coined by a British doctor in 1905, to describe a natural fog contaminated by industrial pollution. Today “smog” generally refers to any large urban air pollution, regardless of whether or not natural fog is actually a component.
Mary Knapp, Weather Data Library
mknapp@ksu.edu