Inventing Pollution: Coal, Smoke, and Culture in Britain since 1800

1 Coal, Smoke, and History

CH A P T E R 1 Coal, Smoke, and History It will be a task for the future social historian to explain why the English of our time were content to live in dirty and gloomy air. —John W. Graham, 1 To millions of our town-dwellers smoke is just what comes out of the chimney, as coal is just what goes on the fire. The idea that smoke is a “problem,” something to be prevented, simply does not exist. —Arnold Marsh, 2 Around the world, a growing number of people are asking questions about how technology is affecting the natural world, human health, and society. Fierce debates rage over whether current levels of consumption and pollution are sustainable, and whether it is possible to both protect the environment and create material prosperity. These vital questions, which will become even more pressing in the decades ahead, have a forgotten history. Of all the challenges that confront the world today, few threaten as many people as the pollution that results from burning fossil fuels. Three billion people—half of the world’s population—now live in cities, many of which contain air that is unfit to breathe. Two hundred years ago, however, only one city on the planet used significant quantities of fossil fuels and experienced the pollution that such consumption entails. In  Londoners burned one million tons of coal—an amount that was equivalent to a ton for every resident. From that year forward, fossil fuel consumption skyrocketed throughout the country, literally fueling Britain’s rise as the most powerful manufacturing, trading, and imperial power that the world had ever seen. You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. Many substances that are now viewed as serious pollutants, including asbestos, lead, and CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), were once considered innocuous . The same was long true of the products of coal combustion. By the middle of the nineteenth century coal smoke filled many British cities, yet few people saw it as detrimental to either human health or to the wider environment. In their view, pollution came not from energy use or industry , but from natural biological processes. They blamed disease on miasma, an invisible gas thought to be given off by decaying plant and animal matter . Thus, the most polluted environments were those in which the greatest quantities of decomposing biomass were found: marshes, jungles, graveyards , cesspools, and sewers. Many people not only considered coal smoke to be harmless, but actually thought of it as an antidote to pollution. According to miasma theory, the acids and carbon in smoke were powerful disinfectants. The notion that coal smoke was beneficial to health began to change during the late nineteenth century. As the air of British cities and towns filled with ever-denser smoke, scientists coined new terms such as acid rain and smog, and physicians blamed smoke for a range of health impairments , including respiratory diseases, rickets, decreased stamina, and even “racial degeneration.” At the same time that these changes were occurring , the new science of bacteriology was leading many to abandon the belief that disease came from miasma. The conceptual disappearance of miasma not only changed attitudes and policies toward public health; it also removed a major justification for coal smoke. Britain, the “first industrial nation”3 and the first to become predominantly urban, was also the place in which the modern idea of pollution was invented. During the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries , people in Britain came to understand coal smoke as pollution and came to understand pollution as an entity that should be regulated by the state, a state that would eventually—through the Clean Air Act of — reach into people’s homes and extinguish the coal fires that had warmed their hearths for generations. This book tells that story. ✦ ✦ ✦ People in Britain began using coal well before the industrial revolution. In contrast to the situation in many other parts of the world, where coal can be found only deep underground, in Britain substantial quantities of coal lay near the surface. Nearly two thousand years ago, during the Roman occupation of Britain, people dug shallow pits to remove the min-  | Inventing Pollution You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright...