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

3 Pollution Redefined

CH A P T E R 3 Pollution Redefined The purest air is to be found on mountains, moors, or far away from contaminating and polluting agencies, such as aggregations of men and animals, manufactories, etc. —Cornelius B. Fox, 18781 DURING THE FINAL DECADES of the nineteenth century a new understanding of air pollution began to develop in Britain. Instead of seeing nature as dirty and civilization as a source of cleanliness, many people began to assume that nature was inherently pure and only became unhealthy as a result of technological processes. Important as this change was, significant continuities connect the two views. First, any deleterious effects from both miasma and coal smoke were blamed on the incomplete oxidation of matter. Under ideal conditions, most people believed, neither biological decay nor combustion would pose any dangers. All that would remain in either case would be simple, inert substances. Second, both miasma and smoke were associated with fog. During the early nineteenth century fog was thought incapable of forming in cities, and its presence in them was seen as a case of the country polluting the city with poisonous miasma from rotting swamps. Over time, however, many people began to associate fog not with marshes and miasma, but with cities and coal smoke. Urban residents came to conflate fog with coal smoke, for the very conditions 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. that made fog likely—cool temperatures and still air—increased the amount of coal that people burned to keep warm and prevented the resulting smoke from dispersing.2 Germs Miasma theory faced a strong challenge in the late nineteenth century from the germ theory of disease. Proponents of the germ theory attacked sanitarians as not only misguided, but dangerous in that they created a false sense of security. Bacteriologists argued that because disease germs were invisible and odorless, surfaces that looked clean or air that smelled fresh might nonetheless harbor deadly microbes. They asserted that all disease could be explained in terms of germs, and that only they possessed the expertise needed to determine whether germs were present. Looking back at the remarkable discoveries in bacteriology that occurred in the late nineteenth century, historians have long disagreed about their significance to public health. While some credit the germ theory for leading medical experts to focus on germs, the true source of disease, rather than chase red herrings such as miasma, others, particularly social historians, disagree. They argue that the discovery of bacteria offered few tangible benefits to patients until the advent of antibiotics decades later, and they suggest that the efforts of sanitarians, even if based upon erroneous ideas, nonetheless reduced the incidence of disease in the decades that preceded the advent of germ theory. Regardless of their position on the impact of bacteriology, both sets of historians share the view that it led people in late nineteenth-century Britain to stop paying attention to environmental conditions.3 The problem with this interpretation is that it focuses overly much on what physicians were doing and saying, while ignoring the ways in which sanitarians appropriated the germ theory in their ongoing struggle for relevance. Rather than abolishing the long-standing dividing lines and disputes in the debate over the role that the environment played in health and disease, the germ theory instead cast it in a new light. Most sanitary reformers vehemently rejected the charge that they had nothing to contribute to Britain’s health. While a few simply ignored the germ theory in the hope that it was a passing fad, others responded by recasting pollution as something that came not only from plants and animals, but from technology. Instead of focusing on decaying organic matter and urging the building of sewers, they shifted their attention to coal smoke and called for its abolition. The identification of smoke as a threat to  | 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 law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. health gave public health reformers a renewed sense of mission at a time when two forces—the growing professionalization...