Visibility at these times could become as low as a few feet (hence the "London fogs" of movie fame) and when combined with the soot created lethal long-persistence smog: these conditions led to the passing of the UK's "Clean Air Act" which banned the burning of smoke-producing fuel.
The particles may be composed of dust or clay, soot or black carbon from grassland or forest fires, sea salt from ocean wave spray, soot from factory smokestacks or internal combustion engines, sulfate from volcanic activity, phytoplankton or the oxidation of sulfur dioxide and secondary organic matter formed by the oxidation of VOCs.
It retains the style of The IPCRESS File — multiple plots twists, Gauloises cigarettes, grimy, and soot-stained British winter.
Masques were usually staged in the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace—but it was feared that the new Rubens murals on the ceiling there would be damaged by candle soot.
The dancers, wishing to gain employment from those same landowners shortly afterwards, would attempt to conceal their identities by blacking their faces with soot and dressing up in a modified version of their Sunday Best, typically black garments adorned with coloured scarves and other fripperies.
Medieval brewers had used many problematic ingredients to preserve beers, including soot and fly agaric mushrooms.
Sonic soot blowers - explaining the use of acoustic technology to clear the soot
Although the full phrase goes "el comal le dijo a la olla, que tiznada estas" (‘the comal said to the pot, you are so full of soot’), for most people it is reminiscent of a popular children's song by Francisco Gabilondo Soler "Cri-Cri" in which the comal complains to the pot for laying on top of it (‘el comal, le dijo a la olla, oye olla, oye oye!, si tu te has creido que yo soy recargadera’).
In October, 1974 Science Magazine published Sulfates as Pollution Particulates: Catalytic Formation on Carbon (Soot) Particles, which Novakov co-wrote with S. G. Chang and A. B. Harker.