World Atlas of Atmospheric Pollution
144
World Atlas of Atmospheric Pollution
144Paperback(Revised Edition)
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781843318910 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Anthem Press |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2011 |
| Series: | Anthem Advances in Atmospheric Environment Science |
| Edition description: | Revised Edition |
| Pages: | 144 |
| Product dimensions: | 8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.40(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
World Atlas of Atmospheric Pollution
By Ranjeet S. Sokhi
Wimbledon Publishing Company
Copyright © 2011 Ranjeet S SokhiAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84331-891-0
CHAPTER 1
AIR POLLUTION HISTORY
Peter Brimblecombe
1.1 Europe and the Near East: Early History and Legislation
1.2 Early Ideas about Air and Its Pollution
1.3 Urban Histories of Air Pollution
1.4 Air Pollution Disasters and Episodes
1.5 Environmental Damage by Acid Rain
1.6 Global Air Pollution Issues
1.7 Final Thoughts
Although interest in indoor air pollution seems relatively recent, our earliest evidence of air pollutants often comes from indoor environments, such as dwellings filled with smoke and associated pollutants from poorly ventilated fires. When cities developed, these also became associated with pollution problems. The development of air pollution over the last 700–800 years seems to follow consistent patterns. Air pollution has often been related to the history of fuel use and the perceptible change in air pollution that arises from the fuels. Increasing energy demands and the adoption of new fuels (sequentially: coal, petrol, diesel) have caused air pollution problems. Mieck (1990) has argued that the numerous pollution decrees from the Middle Ages are essentially a response to single sources of what he terms pollution artisanale. These were usually just one particular type of pollution and distinct from the later and broader pollution industrielle that characterised an industrialising world.
Air pollution has often been visible as smoke, photochemical smog and diesel smoke. The concentration of air pollutants from a given source, such as coal, seems to increase for a long period and undergo a decrease due to declining emission strength. The pollution from one source is often replaced by another (e.g. coal smoke by petrol-derived pollution).The patterns of changing air pollution, although similar from one country to another, can take place over very different timescales. The changes, which took almost 800 years in Britain, all seem to have occurred in about 50 years in China, as it has moved from wood, to coal, to oil and then to gas.
Air pollution problems have not been easy to solve and the slow rate of improvement has often interested historians. The obvious cause is the reluctance of industry to expend money on abatement and limit technological progress. It is also possible that citizens in polluted cities have come to accept the state of the air where they live and work. The cosiness of the open coal fire and the fear of job losses (Mosley 2001) may have limited the strength of public protest. More recently, the implications of air pollution control on personal freedom (i.e. not having access to a car) seems an additional source of resistance to change.
From the second half of the twentieth century, air pollution problems have also been more global. There is a wide social awareness of the enhanced greenhouse effect, acid rain, the ozone hole and Asian brown haze.
The history of air pollution shows that our atmospheric environment is in a state of continual change. Problems emerge, reach some kind of crisis and then decline, only to be overtaken by others. The scales involved have become ever larger. The ability to detect pollutants and their effects has led to increasing instrumentation rather than influencing human perception. As people often interpret air pollution from local perceptions (Bickerstaff and Walker 2001), it may be increasingly difficult to maintain interest on larger temporal and spatial scales involving other pollution problems that are ever more subtle.
1.1 Europe and the Near East: Early History and Legislation
Our understanding of the first few thousand years of air pollution history is clearest for Europe and the Near East, where there are the most numerous written records, see Figure 1.1.
Sinusitis in Anglo-Saxon England
Examination of skulls from burial sites can be used to establish the frequency of sinusitis (Figure 1.1a). An increased incidence of sinusitis in the Anglo-Saxon period has suggested smoky interiors to huts which lacked chimneys. In earlier periods there may have been a greater tendency to cook outside, so interiors may have been less smoky (Brimblecombe 1987a).
Anthracosis in mummies
Soot deposits in desiccated lung tissue from mummies, most particularly in Egypt, suggest long exposure to smoke (Figure 1.1b).
Air pollution in dwellings, Sweden
Studies of indoor air pollution in reconstructed houses, shown in Figure 1.1c, from the Scandinavian Iron Age attest to pollutant concentrations sufficient to affect health (Edgren and Herschend 1982; Skov et al. 2000).
Babylon
Babylonian and Assyrian law included clauses that affected neighbours' property. Although the earliest laws, those of Hammurabi (twenty-third century BC) relate mostly to water (Driver and Miles 1952), smoke was typically treated in the same way in ancient law (Brimblecombe 1987b). Around AD 200, the Hebrew Mishnah, and its interpretation through the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmud, details pollution issues (Mamane 1987).
Hermopolis, Egypt
The Victory Stela of King Piye tells of the Nubian king's campaigns in Egypt, and that stench and a lack of air caused the city of Hermopolis to surrender c. 734 BC (Lichtheim 1980).
Greece
Cities of the ancient world were often small, but the inhabitants lived in high density, which led to pollutants becoming concentrated. Policy decisions regarding pollution in classical Greece were made by the astynomoi (controllers of the town), who were to ensure that pollution sources were well beyond the city walls; fortunately, industrial processes often took place in forests where fuel was abundant.
Rome
Sextus Julius Frontinus (c. AD 30–100) oversaw water supply to imperial Rome (recorded in his book, De Aquaeductu Urbis Romae) and believed his actions also improved Rome's air. Civil claims over smoke pollution were brought before Roman courts almost 2000 years ago (Brimblecombe 1987b).
Indoor air pollution at Herculaneum
Well-preserved skeletons from Herculaneum show lesions on the ribs that suggest a high frequency of pleurisy, see for example Figure 1.1d. Such lung infections have been seen as the result of indoor pollution from oil lamps and cooking (Capasso 2000).
Mining in Spain
The geographer Strabo described (c. 7 BC) the high chimneys required to disperse the air pollutants from silver production in Spain.
Justinian Code
In AD 535 the Institutes issued under the Roman emperor Justinian were used as a text in law schools. Under the section Law of Things, our right to the air is clear: 'By the law of nature these things are common to mankind – the air, running water, the sea, and consequently the shores of the sea.'
Coal, industry and urban pollution in medieval London
Wood was in such short supply in thirteenth-century London that coal brought by ships from England's north began to be used, especially to produce lime as a cement. The strange-smelling coal smoke was thought unhealthy, so by the 1280s there were attempts to prevent its use. As Sea Coal Lane and Limeburner's Lane lay to the west of the city (Figure 1.1e), prevailing winds carried smoke across the city towards busy St Paul's Cathedral. The area was further troubled by odours from the River Fleet. These were said to affect the health of the White Friars. The Knights Templar were accused of blocking the river in 1306, perhaps unfairly, as a commission of 1307 found tanning and butchers' waste from Smithfield market in the river. Domestic smoke also created problems and there were complaints that chimneys were not high enough to disperse it (Brimblecombe 1987a).
1.2 Early Ideas about Air and Its Pollution
Key ideas and discoveries which significantly influenced our understanding of air pollution are shown in Figure 1.2.
Miasmatic theories of disease and Hippocrates (c.460–377 BC)
Ancient writings of the classical world (e.g. Air, Water and Places in the Hippocratic Corpus) describe the importance of climate and the properties of air relevant to health. Such environmental factors were seen as important in the treatment of disease.
Imperial Rome
In Imperial Rome, Nero's tutor, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC–AD 65), was often in poor health and suffered from asthma, so his doctor ordered him to leave Rome; he found that no sooner had he escaped its oppressive atmosphere and awful culinary stenches, his health improved.
Pliny
Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79) observed that saline rain damaged crops.
Arabic sources
With the loss of understanding of classical writings in Europe, the Hippocratic Corpus became better known in the Arab world, so miasmatic theories of disease made it easy for air pollution there to be linked to health (Gari 1987). There were many important treatises, such as that on avoiding epidemics by at-Tamimi (AD 932–1000), a great physician who grew up in Jerusalem.
Hildegard von Bingen
The German mystic Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179) thought that the dust of the atmosphere was harmful for plants.
Spontaneous generation
In the Middle Ages, it was generally accepted that some life forms arose spontaneously from non-living matter, which could explain the minute organisms and small animals found in rainwater. Scientists gradually began to doubt this and experiments by the Italian physician Francesco Redi (1626–97) suggested that spontaneous generation was unlikely.
Agricola
Georgius Agricola (1494–1555) wrote De Re Metallica and drew attention to the dangers of mining and the exposure of miners and metalworkers to diseases of air that caused damage to the lungs.
Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim ('Paracelsus')
Paracelsus (1493–1541) wrote the first monograph dedicated to diseases of miners and smelter workers, beginning a long interest in the toxicity of metals.
Margaret Cavendish and Kenelme Digby: atoms and air pollution
Margaret Cavendish (1623–73) wrote much about atoms, and in her book Poems and Fancies (1653) she speculated on atoms from burning coal: 'Why that a coale should set a house on fire/Is, Atomes sharpe are in that coale entire/Being strong armed with Points, do quite pierce through;/Those flat dull Atoms, and their forms undo.'
Sir Kenelme Digby (1603–65), who admired Cavendish, wrote in A Discourse on Sympathetic Powder (1658) that the corrosiveness of coal smoke arose when it dissipated to atoms that were claimed to be a 'volatile salt very sharp ...', suggesting that the smoke was acidic.
John Evelyn
John Evelyn (1620–1706), in the earliest book on air pollution, Fumifugium (1661), sought a broad explanation for the corrosive effects of coal-burning, which damaged plants, materials and health. He observed long-range transport of pollutants from the Great Fire of London and pressed for laws about air pollution that never got on to the statute books.
John Graunt
John Graunt (1620–74), an early demographer, wrote Natural and Political Observations Made Upon the Bills of Mortality (1662), which suggested that the high death rate in London could be attributed partly to coal smoke.
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle (1627–91), who we remember for Boyle's Law, was interested in the corrosiveness of trace components of air in his book A General History of the Air (1692).
Bernardo Ramazzini
Ramazzini (1633–1714) is often considered the father of occupational medicine. De Morbis Artificum Diatriba described the diseases of particular trades, including leather-tanning, wrestling and grave-digging. Ramazzini says that with a general improvement in diet and less arduous work, people would be better able to resist attacks on their health.
Joseph Black
Joseph Black (1728–99) wrote Experiments upon Magnesia Alba, Quick-Lime, and some other Alkaline Substances (Edinburgh, 1756), which describes carbon dioxide.
Lavoisier, Scheele and Priestley
Lavoisier (1743–94), Scheele (1742–86) and Priestley (1733–1804) are often linked with the discovery of oxygen. In Réflexions sur le Phlogistique (1783), Lavoisier showed the phlogiston theory to be inconsistent, so the modern ideas of atmospheric composition developed.
Henry Cavendish
Cavendish (1731–1810) perfected the technique of collecting gases above water, publishing On Fractious Airs (1766). He investigated 'fixed air' and isolated 'inflammable air' (hydrogen) in 1766 and studied its properties. He showed that it produced a dew, which appeared to be water, upon being burnt. He also investigated the concentrations of oxygen above England using a balloon flight (Brimblecombe 1977).
Humphrey Davy
Sir Humphrey Davy (1778–1829) investigated firedamp (methane) in mines and developed the safety lamp to detect it.
William Ramsay
Henry Cavendish had noticed that a small volume of air could not be combined with nitrogen using electrical sparks. The experiment was ignored until Ramsay (1852–1916) examined it using spectroscopy, recognising it as a new element, which he termed argon (from a Greek word for inert).
Alice Hamilton
Alice Hamilton (1869–1970) of Harvard University studied lead metabolism in the human body and was particularly dismayed when General Motors began to put lead into gasoline in the 1920s.
Arie Jan Haagen-Smit
Dr Arie Haagen-Smit (1900–77) was interested in crop damage in the Los Angeles region. He realized that the damage arose from the photochemical reaction of vehicle emissions in sunlight. He saw the need for emissions controls on automobiles.
Christian Junge
Christian Junge (1912–96) made many valuable contributions to atmospheric research, including his realisation in 1952 of the continuous level of distribution of atmospheric aerosols, and the first direct observation (1961) of the stratospheric sulphate aerosol layer (often called the 'Junge layer'). His book Atmospheric Chemistry and Radioactivity (1963) gave a sense of unity to a new research field, so important to our understanding of the environment today.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from World Atlas of Atmospheric Pollution by Ranjeet S. Sokhi. Copyright © 2011 Ranjeet S Sokhi. Excerpted by permission of Wimbledon Publishing Company.
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