People across the US are reporting a mysterious fog with a ‘chemical smell’ that they believe is making them sick within minutes of exposure.
Reports of the funnatural’ fog began late December in parts of Texas, Wisconsin, Iowa, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Florida, and Minnesota.
Locals have flooded social media with videos explaining their ‘symptoms’ since the fog appeared in their area, which have included coughing, sore throat, congestion, eye irritation, lethargy, loss of appetite and gut issues.
A Florida resident told DailyMail.com that she stopped at a gas station for about 10 minutes and began feeling ill.
‘Within about and hour, I kept sneezing over and over for about three hours, and my eyes were really puffy,’ she said.
‘I got very warm and I felt like I had a fever, and my stomach was cramping.’
One TikTok user, who goes by ‘Rusky,’ said he has also been experiencing symptoms: ‘Sore throat, coughing, tired, lethargic — I’m still recovering from it.’
He stated in the video that all of his symptoms are a direct result of the fog.
But aside from the reports, experts have stated that there is no evidence to suggest that this ‘sickness-causing’ fog is anything but a co-occurrence of a natural weather event and the viruses that are especially common this time of year.
‘Sore throat, coughing, tired, lethargic — I’m still recovering from it,’ said one TikTok user posting from the Pacific Northwest
Florida resident Holly Meyer Lucas also shared a video on TikTok: ‘I’ve been sick and my eyes have been an absolute painful disaster for like two weeks now.
‘We’ve had the fog in Florida, which is absolutely not normal,’ she said.
Reports have claimed that the fog is unusual not just because of its smell, but also because it appears as ‘white particles’ swirling in the air.
The idea about the particles have led some Americans to check their air filters, which a North Dakota resident recently did and made a shocking discovery.
He claimed the air filter was recently changed before the investigation.
‘Super dirty, so quickly,’ he said in a video, describing the filter. He showed it next to a brand new filter to demonstrate how much residue had accumulated.
‘Beware the fog,’ the video’s text reads.
David Bamber, from St Petersburg, Florida, shared a TikTok video of himself walking through the dense fog, explaining that normal fog typically dissipates later in the day, but the recent fog lingers into all hours of the night.
‘The weirdest part is the taste and smell,’ said Bamber. ‘It’s smells like after you set off a bunch of fireworks and the taste of the air is toxic. It is super weird.’
Another TikTok user from North Dakota posted a video showing his house’s air filter, which he claimed to have changed recently, filled with residue
Holly Meyer Lucas from Florida posted a TikTok describing how she has been sick and suffering from ‘painful’ eyes since the fog appeared in her state
While the fog’s ‘white particle’ appearance may seem unusual, fog is a visible aerosol consisting of tiny water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth’s surface.
Shining a light in the fog makes these particles visible.
As for the ‘chemical’ smell people have described, fog can absorb and trap polluted air near the Earth’s surface, acting as a carrier for car exhaust, industrial emissions and other airborne chemicals.
‘When fog forms, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and other polluting gases are taken up or ‘scavenged’ by fog water droplets,’ explained Rudolf Husar, a Washington University atmospheric scientist, in an article for NASA Earth Observatory.
What’s more, smells become more potent in humid air because the water droplets trap the odor-causing molecules and allow them to linger for longer and remain concentrated.
Plus, persistent foggy weather is not unusual for this time of year.
The ‘chemical’ smell associated with this recent fog is likely not coming from the fog itself, but rather from pollutants that were already present in the air when the fog formed.
The respiratory-illness-like symptoms people have been reporting can also be explained by natural fog.
A Florida resident told DailyMail.com that they stopped at a gas station (pictured) for about 10 minutes and began feeling ill. She then went into a coughing fit and had a fever
Conspiracy theories are running rampant with people suggesting the fog could be a kind of chemical weapon or is related to the drones that mysteriously plagued the nation in December
Multiple studies have shown that fog can cause respiratory issues such as coughing, shortness of breath, chest pain, congestion and wheezing, especially in people with asthma.
That’s because our lungs are designed to inhale oxygen, not water. When we inhale the increased moisture content of the air, it can irritate the respiratory system and trigger uncomfortable symptoms.
Fog can be especially irritating when it is mixed with airborne pollutants, allergens or other particles.
But the reports have sparked a wave of conspiracy theories that are currently sweeping social media.
The scare first began during the last week of the year and blew up on social media on December 29, when postings related to the fog skyrocketed.
While fog typically looks like a soupy gray mist, shining a light directly through it causes the light to scatter off of each individual water droplet that makes up the fog
Many of these posts speculate that the fog may be a chemical or biological weapon involved in a terrorist plot, or even an experiment conducted by our own government.
People who subscribe to that latter theory have compared the fog to Operation Sea Spray, a secret US Navy biological warfare experiment that sprayed massive amounts of bacteria into the air two miles off the coast of San Francisco, California.
As for the ‘chemical’ smell people have been describing, fog can absorb and trap polluted air near Earth’s surface, making their scents more potent
Multiple studies have shown that fog can cause respiratory issues such as coughing, shortness of breath, chest pain, congestion and wheezing. PIctured is a still from a camera in Texas, showing the particles in the fog
The purpose of this experiment, conducted in 1950, was to learn how vulnerable large US cities like San Francisco would be to a biowarfare attack by terrorists.
Though the Navy thought they were spraying bacteria was completely harmless to humans, officials quickly realized that was not the case when 11 Bay Area residents rushed to the hospital with severe urinary tract infections.
One affected person who was recovering from prostate surgery died.
Others have suggested that the fog could be related to the unexplained drones that plagued the Northeast in recent months.
‘Well weren’t there drones that sprayed something? I seem to recall some videos of that somewhere… No idea of the validity though,’ asked one X user.
