Page 24 - Fundamentals of Air Pollution

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The History of

Air Pollution

I. BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

One of the reasons the tribes of early history were nomadic was to move
periodically away from the stench of the animal, vegetable, and human
wastes they generated. When the tribesmen learned to use fire, they used
it for millennia in a way that filled the air inside their living quarters with
the products of incomplete combustion. Examples of this can still be seen
today in some of the more primitive parts of the world. After its invention,
the chimney removed the combustion products and cooking smells from
the living quarters, but for centuries the open fire in the fireplace caused
its emission to be smoky. In AD 61 the Roman philosopher Seneca reported
thus on conditions in Rome:
As soon as I had gotten out of the heavy air of Rome and from the stink of the
smoky chimneys thereof, which, being stirred, poured forth whatever pestilential
vapors and soot they had enclosed in them, I felt an alteration of my disposition.

Air pollution, associated with burning wood in Tutbury Castle in Notting-
ham, was considered "unendurable" by Eleanor of Aquitaine, the wife of
King Henry II of England, and caused her to move in the year 1157. One

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