 My name is Keith Moore, I'm the Royal Society's librarian and today I'm joined by Dr Mark Richards, who is an Atmospheric Physicist from Imperial College. Mark, welcome. And we're here to talk about John Evelyn, one of our earliest Royal Society Fellows, and in particular one book that he wrote and published in 1661 called Fumafugium. But first of all Mark, if we had goggles and could see the atmosphere, what would it look like? Well, it would look like some sort of soup in some respect. I wouldn't say quite say pea soup, but it certainly would look like a soup, a mix of all sorts of different chemicals and components, and it's quite dynamic. Now John Evelyn's book Fumafugium takes in some of these ideas, doesn't it? Because some of it is very visual and he addresses his book to King Charles II, because he wants something to be done about it. It was one day as I was walking in your Majesty's Palace at Whitehall, where I have sometimes the honour to refresh myself with the sight of your illustrious presence, which is the joy of your people's heart, that a presumptuous smoke issuing from one or two tunnels near Northumberland House and not far from Scotland Yard, did so invade the court that all the rooms, galleries and places about it were filled and infested with it, and that to such a degree as men could hardly discern one another for the cloud. There are some few particular tunnels and issues, belonging only to brewers, dyers, lime burners, salt and soap boilers and some other private trades, one of whose spiracles alone does manifestly infect the air. Whilst these are belching it forth their sooty jaws, the city of London resembles the face rather of Mount Etna, the court of Vulcan, Stromboli, or the suburbs of Hell than an assembly of rational creatures. Marcus, this is a very visual way to talk about industrial pollution. I mean he does use very vivid language, doesn't he? You've got the volcanoes, it has a kind of rather beastly quality, something like a dragon, so this seems to be very visible pollution, doesn't it? Absolutely. He's given pollution this almost made it feel alive and therefore more of a threat. In modern times that element is still required. Pollution is not going to be solved by let's say a logical argument or a purely economic argument. It has to permeate into the hearts and minds of the general public for them to put pressure on shall we say the powers that be to take action so that we can reduce the effects of it. What if there appear to be an arsonical vapour as well as sulphur, breathing sometimes from this intemperate use of seacull in great cities? That there is what does plainly stupify is evident to those who fit long by it. Newcastle Coal as an expert physician affirms causeth consumptions, physics and the indisposition of the lungs, not only by the suffocating abundance of smoke but also by its virulency. For all subterranean fuel half a kind of virulent or arsonical vapour rising from it which speedily destroys those who dig it in the mines. Mark Evelyn talks about his expert physician giving views on the impact on human health of particularly burning coal. What's the impact on human health of pollutants today? Same or different? Well I suppose now we're talking about maybe emissions from transport like nitric oxide, sulphur dioxide, potentially things like volatile organic carbons and things of that nature. They have all sorts of effects, respiratory illnesses and there's even evidence to suggest that they can have impacts on brain tissue and so on. So they're similar in the sense that they are severe adverse health effects but the pollutants are different and so how we measure them, how we visualise them are different to perhaps then where it was very visible, it was smart, it was thick smoke and it was clear that you are breathing that in. Whereas now where a lot of the pollution sources are let's say from vehicles, the particles are much smaller, essentially invisible to the human eye. It's possible to be in a world where you don't necessarily have this sense of urgency because you can't see the effects but yet we know that pollution kills many many thousands in the UK every year and millions worldwide. It is this horrid smoke which obscures our churches and makes our palaces look old which fouls our clothes and corrupts the waters so as the very rain and refreshing juice which fall in the several seasons precipitate this impure vapour which with its black and tenacious quality spots and contaminates whatever is exposed to it. Now I like John Evelyn's method of detecting pollution which is kind of sounds like looking at his white shirt and seeing the spots on there. Now you have your own detecting system don't you? Tell us about that. Do you have a portable system like John Evelyn's shirt? Absolutely, not quite on the shirt but we realised that the then current way how air pollution was monitored was very much dependent on large fixed stations that are positioned in specific areas. Ultimately we are on the move often and so we developed, we basically took the fixed open path unit and we basically housed it within a box and initially it was a violin case if truth be known. So we literally had two people walking with the units down Exhibition Road and all around South Kensington and at that time you had people selling newspapers and flowers and things on street corners so we decided to place a unit there for about 15-20 minutes just to see what sort of pollution they were being exposed to. Now the average wasn't necessarily a lot higher than elsewhere however what there were were huge spikes and those spikes were basically correlated with the changing of the traffic lights and so you start to think that a relatively innocent job like selling newspapers or flowers on the corner could actually be very dangerous especially if you are quite vulnerable because you were being exposed to these spikes time and time again. Not therefore to be forgotten is that which was by many observed that in the year when Newcastle was besieged and blocked up in our late wars so as through the great dearth and scarcity of coals those fumous works many of them were either left off or spent but few coals in comparison to what they now use. Divers gardens and orchards planted even in the heart of London were observed to bear such plentiful and infinite quantities of fruits as they never produced the like either before or since. So Mark we've spent a little bit of time with John Evelyn having read Fumafugium what impression do you come away with? What do you think of Evelyn? This was not John Evelyn's area of expertise per se but he was concerned enough to raise it at the highest level and sometimes you know something like air quality is precisely that type of topic that everybody should be concerned about. I like to think of John Evelyn as an environmental protester I think. I would say so yes I mean he was in a position to influence the powers that be the decision makers and he used that position to bring attention to something that didn't just affect him affected you know people much more widely and so for that I think he should be commended. I'm learning a lot of tips here how to how to get things done. I think when I get back to Imperial I'll call one or two of the senior academics your most sacred esteem you're supposed to esteem sacred scholar.