A deposit gauge is a large, funnel-like scientific instrument used for capturing and measuring atmospheric particulates, notably soot, carried in air pollution and deposited back down to ground. [1]
A deposit gauge is a large, funnel-like scientific instrument used for capturing and measuring atmospheric particulates, notably soot, carried in air pollution and deposited back down to ground. [1]
Deposit gauges are similar to rain gauges. They have a large circular funnel on top, made of stone so as not to be corroded by acid rain and mounted on a simple wooden or metal stand, which drains down into a collection bottle beneath. [1] Typically the funnel has a wire-mesh screen around its perimeter to deter perching birds. [1] Most are made to a standardized design, known as a standard deposit gauge, introduced in 1916 [2] and formalized in a British Standard in 1951, [3] which means the pollution collected in different places can be systematically studied and compared. [1] [4] [5] The bottle is removed after a month and the contents taken away for analysis of water (such as rain, fog, and snow), insoluble matter (such as soot), and soluble matter. [4]
The first gauges of this type were developed in the early 20th century by W.J. Russell of St Bartholomew's Hospital and the Coal Smoke Abatement Society. [1] Between 1910 and 1916, the design was refined and standardized by the Committee for the Investigation of Atmospheric Pollution, a group of expert, volunteer scientists studying air pollution of which Sir Napier Shaw, first director of the Met Office, was chair. [5] The first scientific paper featuring deposit gauge measurements was titled "The Sootfall of London: Its Amount, Quality, and Effects" and published in The Lancet in January 1912. [6] [7] Thanks to the introduction of the deposit gauge, air quality in Britain was monitored systematically from 1914 onward and this played an important role in determining the effectiveness of efforts to control pollution. [8] By 1927, some deposit gauges were already showing 50 percent reductions in "deposited matter", although air pollution remained a major problem. [9]
Over the next few decades, deposit gauges were deployed in many British towns and cities, allowing rough comparisons to be made of pollution in different parts of the country. [10] [11] According to pollution historian Stephen Mosley, by 1949, some 177 gauges had been deployed across Britain, so creating the world's first large-scale pollution monitoring network, but the number increased dramatically after the Great London Smog of 1952, reaching 615 in 1954 and 1066 in 1966. [4]
Although deposit gauges were inaccurate and their limitations were well known from the start, [1] [12] [13] their widespread introduction still represented a considerable advance in the study and comparison of pollution at different times of the year and in different places. [4] [14] In his book State, Science and the Skies: Governmentalities of the British Atmosphere, Mark Whitehead, a geography lecturer at Aberystywth University, has described the deposit gauge as "perhaps the most important technological device in the history of Britain's air pollution monitoring". [15] Even so, from the mid-20th century, it was gradually superseded by more accurate instruments and better methods of data collection and analysis.[ citation needed ]
Today, although air pollution is more likely to be measured with automated electronic sensors, deposit gauges are still occasionally used.[ citation needed ] Modern variants of the standard deposit gauge include the so-called "frisbee" gauge, in which the deposit collector is shaped like an inverted frisbee. [16] Other variants include the directional deposit gauge, which has four tall, removable bottles to collect deposits arriving from different directions. [17]
Nuclear winter is a severe and prolonged global climatic cooling effect that is hypothesized to occur after widespread firestorms following a large-scale nuclear war. The hypothesis is based on the fact that such fires can inject soot into the stratosphere, where it can block some direct sunlight from reaching the surface of the Earth. It is speculated that the resulting cooling would lead to widespread crop failure and famine. When developing computer models of nuclear-winter scenarios, researchers use the conventional bombing of Hamburg, and the Hiroshima firestorm in World War II as example cases where soot might have been injected into the stratosphere, alongside modern observations of natural, large-area wildfire-firestorms.
Smog, or smoke fog, is a type of intense air pollution. The word "smog" was coined in the early 20th century, and is a portmanteau of the words smoke and fog to refer to smoky fog due to its opacity, and odor. The word was then intended to refer to what was sometimes known as pea soup fog, a familiar and serious problem in London from the 19th century to the mid-20th century, where it was commonly known as a London particular or London fog. This kind of visible air pollution is composed of nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxide, ozone, smoke and other particulates. Man-made smog is derived from coal combustion emissions, vehicular emissions, industrial emissions, forest and agricultural fires and photochemical reactions of these emissions.
Smoke is a suspension of airborne particulates and gases emitted when a material undergoes combustion or pyrolysis, together with the quantity of air that is entrained or otherwise mixed into the mass. It is commonly an unwanted by-product of fires, but may also be used for pest control (fumigation), communication, defensive and offensive capabilities in the military, cooking, or smoking. It is used in rituals where incense, sage, or resin is burned to produce a smell for spiritual or magical purposes. It can also be a flavoring agent and preservative.
The Great Smog of London, or Great Smog of 1952, was a severe air pollution event that affected London, England, in December 1952. A period of unusually cold weather, combined with an anticyclone and windless conditions, collected airborne pollutants—mostly arising from the use of coal—to form a thick layer of smog over the city. It lasted from Friday 5 December to Tuesday 9 December 1952, then dispersed quickly when the weather changed.
Soot is a mass of impure carbon particles resulting from the incomplete combustion of hydrocarbons. Soot is considered a hazardous substance with carcinogenic properties. Most broadly, the term includes all the particulate matter produced by this process, including black carbon and residual pyrolysed fuel particles such as coal, cenospheres, charred wood, and petroleum coke classified as cokes or char. It can include polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heavy metals like mercury.
The Clean Air Act 1956 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom enacted principally in response to London's Great Smog of 1952. It was sponsored by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government in England and the Department of Health for Scotland, and was in effect until 1993.
Black carbon (BC) is the light-absorbing refractory form of elemental carbon remaining after pyrolysis or produced by incomplete combustion.
Fumifugium, or, The inconveniencie of the aer and smoak of London dissipated together with some remedies humbly proposed by J.E. esq. to His Sacred Majestie, and to the Parliament now assembled is a pamphlet published in London, 1661, by John Evelyn. It is one of the earliest known works on air pollution and is still considered a significant contribution to the literature on the subject over three and half centuries after its publication. The letter was specifically addressed to King Charles II of England and discussed problems with the capital's air pollution dating back to medieval times. Evelyn refers to Greek philosophers, who once believed that air was the principle of the earth and primary substance of the soul up until the time that air pollution began to cause ill health.
Air stagnation is a meteorological condition that occurs when there is a lack of atmospheric movement, leading to the accumulation of pollutants and particles that can decline the air quality in a particular region. This condition typically correlates with air pollution and poor air quality due to the possible health risks it can cause to humans and the environment. Due to light winds and lack of precipitation, pollutants cannot be cleared from the air, either gaseous or particulate.
Air pollution is the contamination of air due to the presence of substances called pollutants in the atmosphere that are harmful to the health of humans and other living beings, or cause damage to the climate or to materials. It is also the contamination of the indoor or outdoor environment either by chemical, physical, or biological agents that alters the natural features of the atmosphere. There are many different types of air pollutants, such as gases, particulates and biological molecules. Air pollution can cause diseases, allergies, and even death to humans; it can also cause harm to other living organisms such as animals and crops, and may damage the natural environment or built environment. Air pollution can be caused by both human activities and natural phenomena.
Pea soup fog is a very thick and often yellowish, greenish or blackish fog caused by air pollution that contains soot particulates and the poisonous gas sulphur dioxide. This very thick smog occurs in cities and is derived from the smoke given off by the burning of soft coal for home heating and in industrial processes. Smog of this intensity is often lethal to vulnerable people such as the elderly, the very young (infants) and those with respiratory problems. The result of these phenomena was commonly known as a London particular or London fog; in a reversal of the idiom, "London particular" became the name for a thick pea and ham soup.
Air pollution in the United Kingdom has long been considered a significant health issue, and it causes numerous other environmental problems such as damage to buildings, forests, and crops. Many areas, including major cities like London, are found to be significantly and regularly above legal and recommended pollution levels. Air pollution in the UK is a major cause of diseases such as asthma, lung disease, stroke, cancer, and heart disease, and is estimated to cause forty thousand premature deaths each year, which is about 8.3% of deaths, while costing around £40 billion each year.
Particulates or atmospheric particulate matter are microscopic particles of solid or liquid matter suspended in the air. The term aerosol refers to the particulate/air mixture, as opposed to the particulate matter alone, though it is sometimes defined as a subset of aerosol terminology. Sources of particulate matter can be natural or anthropogenic. They have impacts on climate and precipitation that adversely affect human health, in ways additional to direct inhalation.
Air pollution measurement is the process of collecting and measuring the components of air pollution, notably gases and particulates. The earliest devices used to measure pollution include rain gauges, Ringelmann charts for measuring smoke, and simple soot and dust collectors known as deposit gauges. Modern air pollution measurement is largely automated and carried out using many different devices and techniques. These range from simple absorbent test tubes known as diffusion tubes through to highly sophisticated chemical and physical sensors that give almost real-time pollution measurements, which are used to generate air quality indexes.
Brynjulf Ottar (1918–1988) was a Norwegian atmospheric chemist who served as the first director of the Norwegian Institute for Air Research. In the 1970s, his work on the long-range transport of air pollution helped to alert the world to the problem of acid rain; later, he was one of the first scientists to describe the mechanism of global distillation, by which pollutants travel from mid-latitude parts of Earth to the Arctic.
Particulate pollution is pollution of an environment that consists of particles suspended in some medium. There are three primary forms: atmospheric particulate matter, marine debris, and space debris. Some particles are released directly from a specific source, while others form in chemical reactions in the atmosphere. Particulate pollution can be derived from either natural sources or anthropogenic processes.
John Switzer Owens was an Irish physician and environmental engineer. He invented some of the first scientific instruments for collecting and measuring air pollution and helped to establish the first large-scale pollution monitoring network in the United Kingdom.
David Fowler,, is a British environmental physicist, recognized as an authority on atmospheric pollution. He specializes in micrometeorology, the land-atmosphere exchange of trace gases and particles, and the effects of pollutants on vegetation.
Hugh Coe is a British atmospheric physicist, currently Head of Atmospheric Sciences and Professor of Atmospheric Composition at the University of Manchester. His research investigates the physics and chemistry of atmospheric aerosols, including their role in climate change and air pollution.
Peter Brimblecombe is an Australian-born, British atmospheric chemist, currently emeritus professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of East Anglia and National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan. In a five-decade research career, he has written or co-authored seven books and around 350 peer-reviewed papers on air pollution and its effects on human health and the environment, but is probably best known as the author of The Big Smoke, which has been described as a definitive history of air pollution.
Smoke abatement led to a 50% reduction of total deposited matter in some of these gauges by 1927, but pollution continued to be a problem.