Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
inversions
in
Rome
were
called
“heavy
heavens”
(Haagen-Smit, 1950). However, by 1329, the ban had
either been lifted or lost its effect.
Between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries, the
use of sea coal and charcoal increased in England. Coal
was used not only in lime kilns and forges, but also
in glass furnaces, brick furnaces, breweries, and home
heating. One of the early writers on air pollution was
John Evelyn (1620-1706), who wrote Fumifugium or
The Inconveniencie of the Aer and the Smoake of Lon-
don Dissipated in 1661. He explained how smoke in
London was responsible for the fouling of churches,
palaces, clothes, furnishings, paintings, rain, dew, water,
and plants. He blamed “Brewers, Diers, Limeburners,
Salt and Sope-boylers” for the problems.
(Hughes, 1994).
Air pollution control in ancient Greece and Rome
wasrelatively weak. In ancient Greece, town leaders
were responsible for keeping sources of odors outside
of town. In Rome, air pollution resulted in civil lawsuits.
During the fall of the Roman Empire, lead smel-
ter emissions declined significantly. Such emissions
rebounded, however, c. 1000 AD, following the dis-
covery of lead and silver mines in Germany, Aus-
tria, Hungary, and other parts of central and eastern
Europe (Hong et al., 1994). The discovery of these
mines resulted in the movement of lead pollution from
southern to central Europe. Wood burning, though, con-
tinued throughout the decline of the Roman Empire in
all population centers of the world.
4.1.3. 1700-1840: The Steam Engine
Air quality in Great Britain (the union of England, Scot-
land, and Wales) increased by orders of magnitude in
severity during the eighteenth century due to the inven-
tion of the steam engine ,amachine that burned coal
to produce mechanical energy. The idea for the steam
engine originated with the French-born English physi-
cist Denis Papin (1647-1712), who invented the pres-
sure cooker in 1679 while working with Robert Boyle.
In this device, water was boiled under a closed lid.
The addition of steam (water vapor at high tempera-
ture) to the air in the cooker increased the total air
pressure exerted on the cooker's lid from within. Papin
noticed that the high pressure pushed the lid up. The
phenomenon gave him the idea that steam could be used
to push a piston up in a cylinder, and the movement of
the cylinder could be used to do work. Although he
designed a model of such a cylinder-and-piston steam
engine in 1690, Papin never built one.
Capitalizing on the idea of Papin, Thomas Savery
(1650-1715), an English engineer, patented the first
practical steam engine in 1698. It replaced horses as a
source of energy to pump water out of coal mines. The
engine worked when water was boiled in a boiler to
produce vapor that was transferred to a steam chamber.
Apipe from the steam chamber to the water source in the
mine was then opened. Liquid water was sprayed on the
hot vapor in the steam chamber to recondense the vapor,
creating a vacuum that sucked the water from the mine
into the steam chamber. The pipe from the chamber to
the mine was then closed, and another pipe from the
chamber to outside the mine was opened. Finally, the
boiler was fired up again to produce more water vapor
to force the liquid water from the steam chamber out of
the mine through the second pipe.
4.1.2. 1200-1700: Quicklime Production
and Coal Burning
In London during the Middle Ages, a new source of
pollution was the production of quicklime [CaO(s), cal-
cium oxide] to form a building material. Quicklime
wasproduced by the heating of limestone [which con-
tains calcium carbonate, CaCO 3 (s)] in kilns with oak
brushwood as the primary fuel source. Quicklime was
then mixed with water to produce a cement, slaked
lime [calcium hydroxide, Ca(OH) 2 (s)], a building mate-
rial. This process released organic gases, nitric oxide,
carbon dioxide, and organic particulate matter into
the air.
Sea coal was introduced to London by 1228 and grad-
ually replaced the use of wood as a fuel in lime kilns
and forges. Wood shortages may have led to a surge in
sea coal use by the mid-1200s. The burning of sea coal
resulted in the release of sulfur dioxide, carbon diox-
ide, nitric oxide, soot, and particulate organic matter.
Coal merchants in London worked on Sea Coal Lane,
and they would sell their coal to limeburners on nearby
Limeburner's Lane (Brimblecombe, 1987). The ratio of
coal burned per forge to that burned per lime kiln may
have been 1:1,000.
The pollution in London due to the burning of sea
coal became sufficiently severe that a commission was
ordered by King Edward I in 1285 to study and remedy
the situation. The commission met for several years,
and finally, in 1306, the king banned the use of coal
in lime kilns. The punishment was “grievous ransom,”
which may have meant fines and furnace confiscation
(Brimblecombe, 1987). One person may have been con-
demned to death because he violated the law three times
 
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