Have transformed history. These are the stories of weather that changed the world. Dunora pennsylvania, a small town 28 miles south of pittsburgh, once vital part of Americas Industrial heartland. Thousands of tons of steel and think produced here helped give america the machines it needed to fight world war ii, and the products that fueled the booming economy in the peace time that followed. America had never been more productive, but prosperity always comes a cost, and in 1948 it was the people of donora who paid the price. In october of that year, pennsylvania suffered a Freak Weather event, and in this small town, it caused the worst air pollution disaster in the nations history. The real facts behind that incident have remained hidden for decades. Devra davis, a leading environmental scientist, has spent years trying to uncover the truth. This was the main drag of donora. This is where of everything happened and where people would gather, there were stores and um lot of bars and it was a pretty vibrant community and lot of activity, lot different than it is today with lot of things boarded up. Three steel and zinc mills dominated the town. The mills were everything, without the mills there would have been no denor at all, because the vast majority of the people either worked in the mills or had jobs that were somehow related. It was the sustaining force for community. The towns industrial success of relied its location on the manon gahela river. The river gave life to the mills. In order to make steel, you need lots of water, and you have that here. Dunoras location made it prosperous, but its steep valley terrain also. Made it vulnerable to a weather phenomenon severe fog, which in 1948 would reak havoc on this community. Valley fogs are clouds that form at ground level. On a clear night, the ground radiates heat upwards, so the air at ground level gets colder and colder. In valley, this cold air collects at the bottom. When. Moist air from the river rises and meets the cold layer, the moisture condenses around tiny particles in the air and forms water droplets. In large of quantities this becomes fog. In denora, fogs were frequent because they were lots of particles for the water to condense around, and when fog mixes with pollution, it becomes smog. Fog and smog are pretty strange, spooky phenomena, but actually theyre little more than tiny, suspended droplets of water, hanging in the air. Now in a lab like this, its actually very difficult to generate a proper fog, so the only way we can make fog is by using a fog machine, but in 1940s in a city like denoura, a combination of fog and the accrid smoke. From the local factories would have combined together into a really nasty smog. On october 27th, 1948, the town woke up to a thick and accurd smog. Classic donora weather. I dont think anybody ever thought it was anything unusual. Truthfully, they at first thought it was just an ordinary heavy smog. They couldnt see their feet at the ground, but that wasnt all that unusual. By the end of that first day though, this was something different. It didnt dissipate, it didnt go. Way. The next morning, the town is still shrouded in smog. Its not usually so persistent, and soon its effects are felt all over town. The street lights were on, they didnt go off automatically. It was very difficult to see the traffic signal, so the cars were going very slowly through the community. Some people couldnt even find their ways home, they needed to find others to help them get around. Normally wind or rain would disperse the smog, but not this time. As the week progresses, it continues to build, becoming more and more pervasive. In donora, the smog got so thick that people reported not being able to see even foot in front of them. These are really surreal and highly disorienting conditions, under which your site is useless and all you can rely on is your. Of hearing, but that wasnt the worst of it, this smog was corrosive, and with every breath, people would have been inhaling this corrosive mist to some of the most delicate tissues in their bodies. Before long, its starting to take its toll on peoples health. For local pharmacist rosemary iams, it was busy time. There was probably three times as many people come in that you would normally see. Breathing problems were sweeping through the town. There seemed to be something sinister in this latest relentless smog. Four days into the extreme weather on friday october 29th, 1948, with many denoran still oblivious to the surge of illness. The halloween parade, one the towns annual. Highlights goes ahead as planned. Most of the time turned out for the halloween parade. The only thing was that i couldnt see the people across mccaine avenue and thats not a very wide avenue because the smog was so dense. As children parade through the streets, people in houses just few feet away are reaching a critical condition. Most people, like my mother, carried on, went to the halloween parade. Behind the scenes a lot of people were getting worried. Some whove never been sick were developing really bad coughs, and those who are already ill, some them were starting to die. Toxic smog is starting to take the ultimate toll on the people of donora. Why its become so severe is still a mystery to them. Theyre yet to discover that the force responsible is the weather. In 1948, dagging smog has smothered the town of donora pennsylvania for four days, infiltrating the lives and lungs of its inhabitants. It seems to be held in place by some invisible force. That force was the weather. In october 1948, donora and western pennsylvania were covered by vast High Pressure system. In other parts of the us, regular weather patterns prevail, but right over donora, the High Pressure brings calm, stable weather, theres no wind or rain to disperse the cold, smallgladen air. The extreme weather here is really almost the complete absence of weather, in the sense that almost nothing was happening, there was just the same air sitting there, stable and building up pollutents. The High Pressure system triggers hazardous meteorological. Effect air, heated by the earth at ground level, rises and begins to warm the colder air above it. If the High Pressure system persists, a switch eventually occurs and the high level air becomes warmer than the air below it. This is a temperature inversion. In denora, the warm air acts as cap over the valley, trapping fumes inside. Special effects expert david woods replicates the capping effect of a temperature inversion using models and smoke machine. This is a representation of danora, town in a steepsided valley. As you can see, most of the pollution is actually leaving the valley as it should, and uh, this perspects lid represent the warm air cap that formed over the valley, trapping in the pollution. As days go by, the toxic fumes have nowhere to go, the smog. Builds, getting thicker and swamping the town. Five days in and the situation takes an alarming turn. Young telephone operator, alice uriniac struggles through the smog to reach work. We had to buzz in to get in the door and the girl let me in, and she said, hurry up, get up here, she says, get your set on people dying. The doctors telephone starts to ring off the hook. After a while we realized you know something was drastically wrong here. The Emergency Services are inundated with calls and the hospitals fill up with patients. The deaths that people experienced would have been like suffocating, like trying to uh breathe through a straw, no matter how deeply you inhale, the lungs are not getting air. By the end of the fifth day, the death toll is. Reached 18, several hundred are stricken with illness. Local physician dr. William rongus knows the factories are to blame, and he issues an urgent warning to the people of donora. He told people literally get the hell out of town. He said that, if you can leave, get out of here. The mill owners deny that theyre responsible, but they eventually agree to slow down production in the plants. But in the end, its not their actions that save the people. People of donora, on sunday october 31st, its the weather that finally brings relief. A front came through and it rained, the wind picked up, and with the wind and the rain, the normal cycle of weather could happen again. The smog has lifted, and in the aftermath, the town takes stock. 20 have died, 6,00 more made sick. Within days, workers had returned to the mills. But one question remained what exactly was it that had killed so many . Its a question that some didnt want answered. For decades, the cause of the 20 deaths in denora pennsylvania in 1948 remained unsolved, but after years of investigating the case, devra davis believes shes found the answer. That massive. Version hit the entire manangella valley, which was full of mills. Those deaths, as far as we know, only happened in donora. What was unique about donora . The whole man valley was full of steel mills and cokeovens, but only donora had the zinc plant, huge zinc plant, of which it was very proud. To make zinc, you need calcium fluoride and you combine it with sand. That combination releases a highly reactive fluoride gas. Like the gases that killed people in the first world war, can get through the upper respiratory tract and then cause separating bloody mass of the lower lungs, and thats what happened in donora, in several of the autopsies that i reviewed, in the aftermath of the tragedy an investigation is mounted, but the authorities are unwilling to pin blame on the mills, concerned by the economic damage it might cause. They conclude instead that the deaths were caused by an act of god. As a result, lessons about pollution that could have been learned around the world are ignored. This has catastrophic impact four years later in 1952, when a similar weather event, thousands of miles away, strikes at the heart of london england. British meteorologist thomas shaffernacker has studied the event. Well, this is one of the best views of london you can possibly get, and we can see the house of parliament here, big ben, and behind it, the battersea power station, which is huge icon of londons industrial era, but the perfect conditions for seeing these landmarks today, just over half a century ago, it was a completely different story. Back then, londons factories and homes filled the air with soody smoke. When the suit. Combined with fog coming off londons river tems, thick smog formed. One londoner who remembers the smog well is don coum. Were recovering from the war, chimes were builting out their fumes and it was hell of a place to live. Then on december 5th, 1952, a large High Pressure weather system settles over london. The city is enveloped in cold, dry, stable air, just like over donora pennsylvania in 1948. Its almost like lid stuck over london, so all of those. Lutants coming out of the chimnes and the factories got stuck creating this thick slushy slurry smog, you couldnt see where youre going, behind us is nelsons column, hes way out in the sky, but you you couldnt even see the base of the column in those days, it was a frightening experience, Poor Visibility isnt the only problem, sulfur dioxide from coalburning fires reacts with water in the foggy air. To form sulfuric acid. 800 tons of the gas are spewed into londons air during the week of the great smog. This smog was horrible, the taste of sulfur in your mouth, the deposit on your skin, one thought they were going to die. Sulfuric acid is one of the most reactive and corrosive materials we know of, and in highly concentrated form, you can actually use it to. Destroy organic materials like this sponge. Now the sulfuric acid present in the smog would be much, much more dilute, and so perhaps the effects would be less dramatic, but you would still get severe irritation, and of course longterm respiratory problems. As the High Pressure system over london enters its fifth consecuted. Day, the smog claims its first victims, the death toll rapidly escalates, by the end of the week, its reached 4,000, a further 12,000 people die over the following year. The scale of this weather disaster is far too big to ignore. This time, killer smog would change our approach to the environment for good. 1952, london was crippled by extreme smog, it was a disaster for london, schools were closed, transport was halted, airports werent working at all, in fact london ground to a complete halt, so london was in the midst of a manmade natural disaster. In just one week, 4,000 people died. The incident echoed what happened in donora pennsylvania. Just few years earlier, when 20 people lost their lives. Londons disaster directed fresh attention on that tragedy of 1948. From the horror, a glimmer of hope emerged. I truly believe that because there were many radio stations and the newspapers wanted something to publicize that this became wellknown throughout the united states. Soon, people elsewhere. Started wondering what smog could mean for their communities, if lot of pollution in a small period of time could kill healthy working class people, then the question had to be asked, what does lot of pollution over a long period of time do to all of us . Because you had people dying. The double tragedies of donora and london force governments into action. In 1955, the American Congress passed the air pollution control. In britain, the Clean Air Act followed year later. The laws gave rise to a whole new field of Scientific Research into air pollution. Today, that legacy continues through the work of people like environmental specialist neil donahu. Yeah, and is the map working well there behind you. He travels around the pitsburg area in a mobile. Air laboratory, he and his team aim to create comprehensive maps showing areas where air pollution is strongest. One thing we hope to do once we complete these maps of pollution is to be able to go to the policy makers uh to then see if we can do anything about the sources of that pollution. Although air pollution remains a problem, the levels he records today are over 80 times lower than they were in 1948. Something good has come out of it, it was was certainly was a tragedy, but the end result has been very good. Laid the foundation for understanding that we had to do something about air pollution, that that smoke was not just the price of. Progress, my grandfather used to say that it smelled like money, well that smell of money could turn out to be deadly. The weather that brought disaster to two industrial communities last century was ultimately responsible for creating a cleaner future for us all. Mein name ist lena, ich bin 21, komme aus dorf brutzelten, das liegt im spessad in bayern, in der zeit habe ich erstmal dieses bewusstsein fur den islam uberhaupt entdeckt, dann habe ich, ich bin habe auch jeden jede nacht zu gott gesprochen, gesagt gott, wenn du da bist, menschen bisschen vom islam erzahlen und so und meiner begeisterung. My name is Muhammad Iqbal chaudhari, i was born in karachi, i was raised in a family of five children, so i started my education at the age of about four or three and a half, my mother. Was deeply religious, he used to explain that in the holy book, there are so many verses of universe and creation of humanity and creation of universe, and that our religion teach us to be more proactively looking into the truth, so we were pondering about different phenomenas, we used to see galaxies, we used to look into different animals, you know, that was extremely important factor in my. Intellectual development and then in my secondary school i have had the opportunity of benefiting from some very good teacher so our laboratory for chemistry and physics and biology were as good as anywhere else in the world. When i moved to university and university was again a have access to some very good teachers, initially i got admission in university of arizona, but then i decided to remain in pakistan because i met professor. Who is my mentor, professor atta has give me sense of direction, he gave me the depth of thinking, i travel to Pennsylvania State university, which is which is very high quality institution, i completed my ph. D. And then got the opportunity of my post talk in cornel university, and i work in frontiers of science and technology, so i was working on the structual chemistry, using all the modern tools of organic chemistry such as animal spectroscopy, xray diffrection, mas spectrometry. Project is all about using natures diversity, and natures diversity, there are lots of chemical diversity, so everything natural you pick and you would identify lots of fascinating molecules. These molecules are capable of locking disease mechanism, and what we have done in last three decades is to actually use profound. Knowledge of chemistry and biological sciences to identify molecules which are present nature as drug like molecules, some them were active as antibacterial, some of them are active as antiviral, some of them are active against the epilepsy, some of them are active against cancer, and project has been extremely success successful because since last three decades we have been looking into various kinds of chemicals from different sources, from marine organisms, from from medicinal plants, from fungi and bacteria and isolated this fascinating array of complex structure, i used to read lot, i used to read about medival muslim scientists who laid the foundation of modern science as it is today, and i used to read about, about ib and other from seventh. To 12th century, muslim world let the entire humanity in terms of science and technology, there were many scientists from west asia who contributed. In the development of science and technology, is a time for us to go back, understand the fundamentals of what is required to be done, and this is the reason why initiatives such as mustapha science and Technology Prize has a pivot role in encouraging people to move, go back to the science and technology and start contributing towards the betterment of humanity by innovation and by by research. First to the headlines, president r allows irans successful satellite launch into orbit, as yet another indication that sanctions cannot stop the countrys progress. Nagrona carbox breakaway government announces its dissolution. As over half of the onclaves population moved to armenia following azerbaijans defensive and leading economic institutes warn that the recession in europes largest economy, germany, this year will be worse than previously feared
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