Word: sulphurously
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...blankets Los Angeles for most of the year. "Los Angeles smog" is a highly complex soup containing, among other things, nitrogen dioxide, hydrocarbons, ozone (a highly active and poisonous form of oxygen) and peroxyacyl nitrate (commonly called PAN). "London smog," on the other hand, usually contains high quantities of sulphur oxides that react with moisture to produce a dilute but corrosive sulphuric-acid mist. Though air conditioners can effectively filter pollutant particles out of the air, the troublesome gaseous contaminants pass through unhindered. Thus city dwellers who feel that they have found sanctuary from the smog in sealed...
...property damage alone, according to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Air pollutants abrade, corrode, tarnish, soil, erode, crack, weaken and discolor materials of all varieties. Steel corrodes from two to four times as fast in urban and indus trial regions as in rural areas, where much less sulphur-bearing coal and oil are burned. The erosion of some stone statuary and buildings is also greatly speeded by high concentrations of sulphur oxides...
Vegetation, too, suffers from polluted air-even in rural areas that until recently were believed to be out of the range of contamination. Sulphur dioxide causes leaves to dry out and bleach to a light tan or ivory color, kills the tips of grasses and of pine and fir-tree needles...
Chief culprits in the Donora, London and New York smog disasters were probably sulphur dioxide and sulphur trioxide, which, either in gaseous form or converted into sulphuric-acid mist, can irritate the skin, eyes and upper respiratory tract. Extreme exposure, such as might occur in an industrial accident, can do irreparable damage to the lungs-and even attack the enamel on teeth...
...their surface. They enable suhphur dioxide, for example, to penetrate deeper into the lungs than it could on its own; without particles to carry it, the gas can be exhaled relatively easily from the upper respiratory tract. Other participates act as catalysts in the atmosphere, speeding the conversion of sulphur dioxide into more harmful sulphuric acid. Particles of arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, lead, chromium and possibly manganese, discharged into the atmosphere by a variety of man-made processes, may contribute to cancer and heart disease...