1. THE HISTORY OF AIR POLLUTION ANCIENT TO VICTORIAN TIMES

2. SUMERIAN/BABYLONIAN ATTITUDES TOWARDS SMOKE
my mood and heart. As if during the night watch
……like excrement.…… my countenance like smoke.
A hymn to Inana for Išme-Dagan: c
Don't cause the oven in a man's house to smoke… it will ruin the bread.
Proverbs: from Nibru: c.6.2.1
Temple of Inana

3. RELIGIOUS CONTEXTS
Typically religions see a relation between cleanliness and closeless to God
Hence pollution and defilement often linked…
Mary Douglas: Purity and Danger - an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo (1966)

4. VICTORY STELA OF KING PIANKHI
“Ur was a stench to the nose for lack of air to breathe and threw itself on its belly…”
Seige of Hermopolis
734 BC
TEXT

5. ASTYMOMOI
In Aristotle’s Athenian Politics - duties of the astymomoi who are responsible among other things for rubbish to be deposited beyond city walls

6. RECORDED FREQUENCY Koryosa China 1150BC Korea 174AD Young-Sin Chun KMA
The histogram shows the three Korean periods: The first Samguk Sidae [Three Kingdoms] actually runs from BC and is reported in Samguksaki. The Koryo Sidae runs and is in Koryosa shown in red. The characters WuTo can be tranlated as “raining soil”. The last period Chosun Sidae( ) has many excellent observations in the early period, but bad economic conditions as a part of invasions hampered records. Painting is “small structure on blue river…”
936-
1392
1392-
1910
Byun, Kwan Shik
(1939) Nu Gak...
Young-Sin Chun KMA

7. AIR AND HEALTH The Hippocratic Corpus had linked air and health
Vitruvius on Architecture sought the proper location of dwellings
Seneca and culinary odours

8. LEGISLATING THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT
Sextus Julius Frontinus (Curator Aquarum)
Governor of Britain ~AD75-78
Improved Rome's water improved the air (miasmatic theory)
Rise of the professional administrator
Moving industry (glass making) to suburbs
“Infamis aer…”
“Gravioris caeli…”
Frontinus The Aqueducts of Rome

9. SMOKE LIKE WATER Urban servitudes
Roman nuisance law treated neighbourly behaviour
Smoke often treated like water… you could no more let water drain across a house than smoke

10. BLACKENNED BUILDINGS
Your fathers' guilt you still must pay, Till, Roman, you restore each shrine, Each temple, mouldering in decay, And smoke-grimed statue, scarce divine
Odes and Carmen Saeculare
Horace

11. MIDDLE EAST “You can't take a wife out of the village to a city…”
Arab inheritance of classical learning meant an understanding of focus air pollution and health by 10th C.
Hebrew Bava Batra and Ktubot describe laws:
“You can't take a wife out of the village to a city…”
Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaqi (“Rashi” ) says this is “because the city is crowded and has no air.... In the village the air is nice"

12. At-Tamĭmi ( )
The black storm which is located in Hijaz and surroundings – is the smoky vapour which asphyxiates and kills

13. MEDIEVAL ENGLAND Fuedal society at its height in 13th century
London an active capital
Fast developing law under Edward I
Edward I

14. AIR POLLUTION INCIDENTS
BIG CHANGE LATE 13TH C
Royal proclamations in 1285, 1288, 1306

15. FUEL FOR MAKING CEMENT
Building at Westminster 1253 Henry III ordered oak brushwood
Henry III
Order of 23 July 1264 “purvey for the King in London… a boat load of sea-coal”

16. PRESSURES TO CHANGE FUEL

17. POLLUTION SEASONS c1300 Summer building works:
extensive production of lime
In 1950s smoke a winter
problem - household heating
Air pollution incidents
mostly in summer

18. MEDIÆVAL SOURCES Extramurality Punishments: Hanging Decapitation
NO CHIMNEYS
Extramurality
Punishments:
Hanging
Decapitation
Grievous Ransoms
Apollo November 2004, p68

19. SALT in LÜNEBURG

20. Braun and Hogenberg
Civitates Orbis Terrarum (1572) from woodcut Sebastian Munster (1550)

21. INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION in ASIA
Use of coal relatively late, so sulphur emissions comparatively low.
Nevertheless early complaints of pollution, e.g 18th C breweries in Bangkok
Hiroshige: Lime kilns
at Hashiba Ferry, Sumida River
One Hundred Famous Views of Edo

22. YORK 1381 Poll Tax establishes industrial locations
Dyers Bakers
Tanners Butchers
Metal workers
Poll Tax establishes industrial locations
Annual wood use to calculate smoke concentrations
Chandlers Glaziers, Tilers
4 ug/m3
FOSS
OUSE

23. SO2 IN YORK (μg m-3)
Fuel imports
Hearth tax

24. AIR POLLUTION IN 17th 18th C

25. William LAUD
Losing you head over air pollutants
boring or brewing

26. Sir Kenelme DIGBY - errant mountebank
“Coal hath… volatile salt very sharp…” dissapated to atoms in smoke
A Discourse on Sympathetic Powder 1658
Acid atoms
Alkali
atoms
John Beal was driven giddy by Digby’s corpuscularian philosophy
Evelyn called him an errant mountebank.
Van Dyck

27. Margaret CAVENDISH - the ornament of England
“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.” Poems and Fancies 1653
fashion victim, dreamer and anti Baconian...
Her personal excess was legendary… men and women lined the streets of London to catch a glimpse of her.

28. John EVELYN Diarist, gardener and environmentalist Fumifugium 1661
Robert Walker 1648
Diarist, gardener and environmentalist
Fumifugium 1661
Many schemes to improve London and its air

29. Ballad of Gresham College
22.
To guesse by one everyone's meritt, A Booke call'd Fumifugiam read. Its Author hath a publique spirit And doubtlesse too a subtile head He must be more than John an Oake Who writes soe learnedly of smoake.
23.
He shewes that 't is the seacoale smoake That allways London doth Inviron, Which doth our Lungs and Spiritts choake, Our hanging spoyle, and rust our Iron. Lett none att Fumifuge be scoffing Who heard att Church our Sundaye's Coughing.
24.
For melioration of the Ayre Both for our Lungs and eke our noses, To plant the Fields he doth take care With Cedar, Juniper and Roses, Which, turn'd to trees, 't is understood, Wee shall instead of coale burne wood.

30. DEATH by FOG The winter of 1679 Deaths very high after weeks of fog
Weekly observations
DEATH by FOG
The winter of 1679
Deaths very high after
weeks of fog
Especially from tisick and among elderly
John Graunt, Natural and Political Observations Made Upon the Bills of Mortality, London: 1662

31. RICH

32. RAINWATER AND PUBLIC HEALTH
Robert Angus Smith
the first Alkali Inspector
former student of Liebig
network of rain sampling sites across the UK (1869/70)
“The purpose of rain is primarily to purify the air and not to fertilize the soil”

33. URBAN POLLUTION
R.A.Smith placed tin cans on fire-stations in London – used term “acid rain”

34. WHY HISTORY?
Film companies
Art history – labelling paintings

35. COLONIAL AMBITIONS
Pigeon-post linking Auckland and Great Barrier Island choose to emphasise urban-industrial not rural aspirations.
Victorians associated smoke and wealth.
JCW Wright 1897
NZ Public Works Dept

36. AUCKLAND Auckland, isthmus with sea breezes
Shallow harbours - emissions from mudflats gave odour problems or fume attacks
1840's problems from putrefying waste in the Port of Auckland
PJ Hogan 1852 Auckland No 2

37. CALCUTTA - problems from the 18th C
NICHOLSON
VISIT
Victorian experts Grover and Nicholson went and pushed for stringent smoke inspection
Some measure of success
smoke observation are not always reliable