Bentley, Doelling 1

Geoffrey Bentley & Julia Doelling

Mrs.Bennett & Mr.Martin

Humanities 2 & AP World History

21 February 2017

Was the Air Pollution Caused by the Industrial Revolution more Damaging to the Environment

than the Pollution Resulting from any Other Time Period?

Understanding the causes of certain events can help to bring about change preventing

these mistakes from continuing in the future.The process of industrialization, beginning in 1750

and lasting through the early 1900s, introduced a number of inventions revolutionizing the way

tasks were performed while also setting a new high in all forms of pollution, particularly that of

the air. While the effects of industrialization were experienced throughout the civilized world, no

other region felt the effects as dramatically as Europe, specifically Britain. The countries in

which the revolution were rooted not only experienced major economic differences but also

witnessed heavy ecological changes, which prove to have been detrimental to the environment as

their impact is still felt today. The air pollution resulting from the Industrial Revolution was more

damaging to the environment than that of any other time period.

The surge in usage of highly polluting machines made possible air pollution on a massive

scale for the first time in history, making the damage done more impactful. The industrial

revolution is marked by the quick advancements in technology taking place during that time; the

speed at which the innovations occurred being as new as the inventions themselves, new

factories appearing as if built overnight. Before the industrial age air pollution was present but a

significantly less prevalent aspect of the everyday lives of individuals, but with the beginning of

the industrial revolution pollution became a normal aspect of life being in some cases
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romanticized. Matthew Osborn states, the pollution from coal smoke was a sign of progress

(Osborn 253). Cities at this time viewed the smoke from factories in cities to be indicative of

development, creating a kind of bizarre competition between cities, the darkest skies being

revered in a way. Not only was the pollution noticeable, it was so pronounced that it became a

marker for progress in this time period, an indicator that is still widely recognized as being a

defining feature of the premodern era. The fact that the visible changes made to the environment

were so distinctly impactful to people is evidence that the pollution of the air to this extreme was

something novel to this period, so much so that it created significant interest of the public,

though the response was misdirected. The industrial age marked the first time of extreme rises in

pollution going from previously insignificant amounts of pollution being released into the air

through the burning of wood for heat to the systematic production of smoke through the use of

fossil fuels to both power machinery and heat buildings. As industrialization in europe

progressed fossil fuels, particularly coal, were increasingly used in everyday life doing

everything from the menial work of heating homes, formerly done with wood, to powering the

new machinery that was quickly taking over european cities in the form of factories. As

explained by Alfred D. Chandler Jr., what did make their impact so profound was the massive

application of a new source of power and heat to the processes of production. These innovations

permitted a fossil fuel, coal, to replace the traditional sources (Chandler 34). Prior to the pre

modern era fossil fuels were a largely untapped resource, but after their introduction with the

industrial revolution they exploded in popularity, quickly replacing any and all other resources,

leaving humans with a dependency only growing stronger into current times. Fossil fuels are

inherently incredibly polluting, there is no way around this fact, and so naturally when they were

first introduced there was a corresponding increase in pollution. While this increase occurred in
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all types of pollution, none were quite as drastic as that of the air. The primary fossil fuel used at

this time was coal and the only way energy can be released from this source is by burning. The

black smoke created by the burning of coal is transferred quite quickly into the air making it

visibly more polluted. Environmental change of this time period is so significant historically

because never before had pollution of this scale taken place. Never before had entire cities and

even countries fallen victim to the black smoke plaguing the skies of europe at the time. Never

before had a source of energy as productive as it is destructive taken over so thoroughly as fossil

fuels did. The most prevalent aspect of this change was the fact that it had never been done

before. There was no prior knowledge of a takeover such as this and so everything that occurred

was entirely unique with nothing to base it off of and nothing to give an idea of how something

would come to play out. Had the people of the premodern era had a past case of rises in pollution

such as this they would have had the resources to figure out ways to combat these issues before

they arose or could have been more aware of them as they occurred, and that is the defining

aspect of the ecological change in this period. The fact that they had no way of predicting the

scale of what would actually occur, while every following time period had knowledge of the type

of environmental change that could arise with high levels of innovation.

The damages caused by pollution resulting from industrialization would set a standard

followed by future time periods regarding the extent of detrimental changes they would allow in

the environment. With the rapid change in how tasks were being handled, innovations in energy

sources have created what is seen as a necessary standard reaching the peak of efficiency, but

efficient is not the word to use. It has been proven that greenhouse gasses thicken the

atmosphere and passively destroy the planet. As Alfred D. Chandler Jr. asserts, The process in

which production and distribution, while expanding productivity and lowering costs bringing a
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final and possibly fatal dependency on fossil fuels, have created a need for a third industrial

revolution (Chandler 33). The third revolution hes talking about would include more

innovations in energy resources like how the first industrial revolution changed the way people

consume energy (fossil fuels) but inevitably throwing the environment under the bus, so not as

much an industrial revolution, but an ecological revolution to attain better environmental

stability. Just the air alone currently has AQI levels, an index measurement of air pollution, in

Europe that are on the edge of safe, moderate to highly dangerous, and South and East Asia have

reached hazardous levels. These are areas where modernization has consumed the region,

industrial businesses are continuing, and yet no one has proposed an effective solution to shrink

these numbers. The standard which was created for efficient product output has subjected the

atmosphere to dangerous amounts of greenhouse gasses, with companies making multiple efforts

to bypass restrictions set to reduce these emissions through carbon trade. Referring to a

londoners report of the state of their city during the first industrial revolution, in 1894, David

Stradling and Peter Thorsheim states, In addition to harming flowers, trees, and food crops, air

pollution and disfigured and eroded stone and iron monuments, buildings, and bridges. Of

greatest concern to many contemporaries, however, was the effect that smoke had on human

health. Respiratory disease, especially tuberculosis, bronchitis, pneumonia, and asthma, were

serious public health problems in late-nineteenth-century Britain and the United States

(Stradling & Thorsheim 8). From the very beginning, when industrialization did not even make

an effort to prevent public health issues, the detrimental effects of the output had been too severe

for most living things having some exposure to these conditions. This carelessness has been

somewhat looked at for human needs but the responsibility toward environmental safety has

been more or less glanced over with a perspective lacking in heedfulness. The ignorance carried
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out and continuing in this day from companies purposefully searching for loopholes to increase

production only elevates evidence that the ever-present ideology of act now and ask questions

later has and will continue to hinder upon progress to a healthier world. Only when these

environmentally destructive processes are reflected upon meticulously in order to create an

efficient and safe form of industrialization understanding how destructive this human endeavor

has been been to the world and strives to lessen the divide between human and nature created by

the unfortunate developments of the industrial revolution.

The air pollution that occurred as a result of industrial has been worse environmentally

than that caused by any other time period. This is not to say that industrialization should have

never occurred but that people should make more of an effort to promote change in order to

prevent continual damage to the environment. If the issues from many hundreds of years ago that

can be controlled are still occurring, even to a somewhat smaller scale, there is a deeper problem

that may be rooted deep in the stubbornness and pride of humans to take an honest reflection of

past events and consider multiple perspectives. While this wasnt the era with the largest amount

of air pollution , it had been the largest spike in history. This development of human innovation

had begun the ever growing avalanche of the destructive force by people that continues to pile on

and on till it finally makes the final blow leaving nothing left but the reminders of the mistakes

that could have been stopped. Understanding the paths that certain events had taken to bring it to

where it is now can help to produce change preventing these mistakes from continuing in the

future.
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Works Cited

Chandler, Alfred D. Industrial Revolutions and Institutional Arrangements. Bulletin of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. 33, no. 8, 1980, pp. 3350.,

www.jstor.org/stable/3823248.

Matthew Osborn. The Weirdest of All Undertakings: The Land and the Early Industrial

Revolution in Oldham, England. Environmental History, vol. 8, no. 2, 2003, pp. 246

269., www.jstor.org/stable/3985711.

Chandler, Alfred D. Industrial Revolutions and Institutional Arrangements. Bulletin of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. 33, no. 8, 1980, pp. 3350.,

www.jstor.org/stable/3823248.