Peter Thorsheim's Inventing Pollution: Coal, Smoke, and Culture in Britain PDF

By Peter Thorsheim

Britain's supremacy within the 19th century depended largely on its significant deposits of coal. This coal not just powered steam engines in factories, ships, and railway locomotives but additionally warmed houses and cooked meals. As coal intake skyrocketed, the air in Britain's towns and cities turned packed with ever-greater and denser clouds of smoke.

In this far-reaching examine, Peter Thorsheim explains that, for a lot of the 19th century, few humans in Britain even thought of coal smoke to be pollutants. To them, toxins intended miasma: invisible gases generated by means of decomposing plant and animal topic. faraway from viewing coal smoke as toxins, most folks thought of smoke to be a necessary disinfectant, for its carbon and sulfur have been proposal in a position to rendering miasma harmless.

Inventing Pollution examines the notably new realizing of pollutants that emerged within the past due 19th century, one who based no longer on natural decay yet on coal combustion. this transformation, as Peter Thorsheim argues, gave start to the smoke-abatement stream and to new methods of considering the relationships between humanity, expertise, and the environment.

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Inventing Pollution: Coal, Smoke, and Culture in Britain since 1800 (Ecology & History) by Peter Thorsheim


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