Fog in USA is just fog, not dangerous - but fog mixed with car fumes can make you feel a bit sick - nothing like the dangerous London pea soupers before clean air acts - or present day Delhi smog
It's just fog, not unusual in winter in the USA. Cities like New Delhi have smog, which can be bad for your health. The London pea-soupers as they were called were very serious for health. That is because the fog was mixed with the sulfur dioxide and other fumes from open fires which Londoners used in the cold weather.
The pea-soupers tasted acid. Any fog in a city is likely to have car fumes at least mixed in with it and possibly some air pollution too especially if there is a temperature inversion. That is when the air is warmer than the ground so that air tends to stay trapped near the ground.
[in the lowest part of our atmosphere, the troposphere] the temperature typically gets lower the higher up you go, for example, when you climb a mountain it is often colder at the top. However, sometimes a small layer can form where the temperature increases with height. This layer is called an inversion.
This often happens in areas of high pressure, where the air high up often sinks towards the ground. As it falls, it dries out and warms up.
This warm layer of air can act as a lid and trap cooler air near the surface (this is because warm air is more buoyant than cold air, and so it will tend to 'float' above the colder air, trapping it). This gives us the inversion, because if you were now to climb the mountain, it would get warmer as you got to the top. This is inverted compared to what you would normally expect, hence the term 'inversion'.
Inversions are most common in winter when mist and fog become trapped in the cooler air low down, but inversions can happen all year round.
When there’s a temperature inversion and fog, then any car fumes, smoke from bonfires, and air pollution gets trapped near the ground and tends to build up.
This is what led to the London “pea-souper” fogs which killed thousands until the first clean air acts were put in place.
You can listen to the story of a scientist here who did the research leading up to the first clean air act in Britain. He talks about what it was like to experience the London pea soupers both from a personal point of view and as a scientist studying the smog:
QUOTE STARTS
[announcer, old broadcast} Ordinary fog does little harm. But smog, a mixture of smoke and fog, has become one of the greatest mass murderers of modern times.
Dr Brian Commins: The smog started on Friday and it was black. It was described as a pea-souper because it was a bit yellowish. You could smell it. It tasted a bit acidic. And it caused absolute havoc. The levels of pollution were horrendous.
You couldn’t see your feet. And I remember on one occasion I wanted to cross a very wide road and shuffled across. And after about ten minutes I didn’t know where I was. And finally I ended up on the same side of the road as where I started.
…
The scientist is Dr Brian Commins, who worked for the Air Pollution Unit set up at St. Bartholomew's hospital in London in the 1950s.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC: Smog IS dangerous - the London “pea-soupers” killed thousands and led to the first clean air acts.
But fog is not dangerous in the cleaner air of modern Europe and North America, though it can lead to some people feeling a bit ill. An N99 / FFP3 mask can help with car fumes and air pollution temporarily caught up in the same temperature inversion as the fog.
Screen shot from 26 seconds into the interview in : Death by smog: London's fatal four-day pea-souper
FFP3 or N99 masks can help protect you from smog. They filter out more of the larger particles and also some of the smaller particles. They can’t protect you from nitrous oxide or sulfur dioxide or other gases but they can protect you from particles / wate droplets that contain them.
. can-pollution-face-masks-really-protect-us-from-exposure-to-toxic-particles
This reel from Weatherbug may help.
TRANSCRIPT:
Q. Is there something going on with this fog and then people getting sick?
A. There's been a lot of fog reported around the world and especially in the US. The National Weather Service in Omaha has issued six consecutive days of dense fog advisories. Places from Minnesota to Florida to Texas have reported fog. So why are we seeing so much fog?
Well, fog is actually most common during the fall and early winter months. Fog happens when the air cool moisture is added or two air masses are mixing together. And during the fall and early winter we see a lot of drastic temperature changes and we see a lot of systems moving through the US that can increase moisture.
Chances of seeing fog especially increase if you saw any rain or snow the day before. So it's not super weird to see a lot of fog this time of year.
Now on to fog potentially making people feel sick. Well this could be true.
I did some research on NOAA's websites and here's what I found. So, the water droplets within the fog can actually act as a surface for particles for particles to latch on to. So, fog can actually increase the amount of particles in the air at ground level and trap pollution. Particles or aerosols can actually increase the possibility of fog. So, if you're especially sensitive to air quality changes, the fog can be making you feel a bit more sick.
Maybe there is a bit of air pollution from some local factory or something. You get more fog with air pollution - used to be that we had smogs in Europe / USA like they often do today in Asia. They were stopped by the clean air acts but if there is a temperature inversion trapping air near the ground there may be noticeable amounts of pollution?
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Fog is essentially ground level cloud. If you lived on the top of a mountain you’d be in the clouds a lot of the time, sometimes for days on end. Well if you live at lower altitudes like most of us do, then you are in the clouds less often but they can sometimes persist for days.
. Fog
Some fogs do lift in the early morning but other types can persist for days.
, What are the different types of fog?
This is what fog looks like from above in the mountains.
. File:Above clouds view.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
Also
. File:Kubiki Mountains over sea of clouds from Mount Karamatsu.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
Smog often reaches very hazardous levels in Indian cities - this is because they don’t have clean air acts and the cities have high levels of pollution often made worse by the effects of grass burning.
The COVID lockdowns made an extraordinary difference.
Delhi schools are closed right now and many people are staying indoors.
This is because of crop residue burning, vehicle emissions and temperature emissions. It happens every winter in India.
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