Air pollution and the increase in cigarette smoking in Great Britain at the start of the 20th century led to high rates of chronic lung disease, though it received little attention until the Great Smog of London in December 1952. This spurred epidemiological research in the United Kingdom, Holland, and elsewhere. In 1953, Dr. George L. Waldbott, an American allergist, first described a new disease he named "smoker's respiratory syndrome" in the 1953 "Journal of the American Medical Association". This was the first association between tobacco smoking and chronic respiratory disease.