20 years after the winter smog episode 1985 - the particle problem then and today

摘要

The 20th anniversary of the smog episode in January 1985 makes me contemplate air pollution policy in Europe during the last decades. The smog episode of December 1952 in London was responsible for thousands of additional deaths and showed the need of reducing ambient air pollution in urban and industrial agglomerates. The "Clean Air Act" in the UK was the right answer, although it needed many years to improve the situation in London satisfactorily (Mayor of London, 2002). In continental Europe only after a second strong smog episode which took place in December 1962 (Steiger and Brockhaus, 1971) a policy was initiated which systematically dealt with the problem of air pollution. Ambient standards for classical pollutants like SO_2 and total suspended particulates (TSP) were set and regulations for smog alert were implemented in Germany. One important personality played a key role in these activities: my teacher and mentor Hans Werner Schlipkoeter, at that time Director of the Medical Institute for Environmental Hygiene (MIU) in Duesseldorf. We celebrate his 80th birthday this year, and the laudatio for him is found in this volume (Hornberg et al., 2004).