Inventing Pollution - 9780821423110

Inventing PollutionCoal, Smoke, and Culture in Britain Since 1800\nAuthor(s): Peter Thorsheim\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Ohio University Press, United States\nImprint: Ohio University Press\nISBN-13: 9780821423110, 978-0821423110\nSynopsis\nGoing as far back as the thirteenth century, Britons mined and burned coal. Britain's supremacy in the nineteenth century depended in large part on its vast deposits of coal, which powered industry, warmed homes, and cooked food. As coal consumption skyrocketed, the air in Britain's cities and towns filled with ever-greater and denser clouds of smoke. Yet, for much of the nineteenth century, few people in Britain even considered coal smoke to be pollution.\n Inventing Pollution examines the radically new understanding of pollution that emerged in the late nineteenth century, one that centered not on organic decay but on coal combustion. This change, as Peter Thorsheim argues, gave birth to the smoke-abatement movement and to new ways of thinki.