Pollution

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Pollution killed approximately nine million people worldwide in 2019, about one in six deaths that year. Roughly three-quarters of those deaths came from air pollution alone. That toll dwarfs the deaths from AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined, and runs fifteen times higher than deaths from all wars and human violence. Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause harm. It can take the form of any substance, whether solid, liquid, or gas. It can also arrive as energy, including radioactivity, heat, sound, or light. Yet the word itself once meant something entirely different. Before the 1860s, to speak of pollution was to speak of the desecration of something sacred, not factory smoke. So how did a word about defilement become a word about chemistry? Who decided that smoke from a chimney was a problem worth a law? And why do the same toxic waste sites keep landing next to the people least able to fight them? This is the story of how humans came to recognize, and to fight, the harm they pour into the world around them.

• 2. Naming The Nuisance

  ›

  "The smoke nuisance" was the phrase people reached for before the modern idea of pollution existed. According to Adam Rome, to describe what we now call air pollution, the gaseous, chemical, and metallic by-products of combustion and industrial processes, people usually talked of the smoke nuisance. There were variations, including "the smoke problem," "the smoke evil," and even "the smoke plague." The language strained to hold a thing no one had a single word for yet. Definitions still vary today on which harms count. The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines pollution as any substances in water, soil, or air that degrade the natural quality of the environment, offend the senses of sight, taste, or smell, or cause a health hazard. The United Nations frames it differently, as the presence of substances and heat in environmental media whose nature, location, or quantity produces undesirable environmental effects. Pollutants can be foreign substances or naturally occurring contaminants. They can be point source, coming from a concentrated site like a factory or mine, or nonpoint source, drifting from widespread origins like microplastics or agricultural runoff. Some definitions still argue over whether noise or greenhouse gases belong on the list at all.

• 3. The Many Faces Of Harm

  ›

  Carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and nitrogen oxides pour from industry and motor vehicles into the air. When nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons react to sunlight, they create photochemical ozone and smog. Fine dust, the particulate matter measured at PM10 down to PM2.5, hangs in that same air. This is only one of pollution's many forms. Soil contamination arrives by spill or underground leakage, carrying hydrocarbons, heavy metals, MTBE, herbicides, pesticides, and chlorinated hydrocarbons into the ground. Radioactive contamination, including alpha emitters and actinides, traces back to twentieth-century atomic physics, from nuclear power generation to weapons research. Thermal pollution shifts the temperature of natural water bodies, often when a power plant uses water as a coolant. Plastic pollution accumulates as products and microplastics that harm wildlife, habitat, and humans. Lesser-known categories round out the list. Electromagnetic pollution describes an overabundance of non-ionizing radiation from radio, television, and Wi-Fi. It shows no demonstrable effect on humans, but it can interfere with radio-astronomy and the safety systems of aircraft and cars. Light pollution covers light trespass, over-illumination, and astronomical interference. Visual pollution can mean overhead power lines, motorway billboards, scarred landforms from strip mining, or even space debris. Chemical pollution carries its own frontier. In August 2022, scientists concluded that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, the so-called forever chemicals, mark a new planetary boundary of their own.

• 4. Where It Comes From

  ›

  Volcanoes rank among the most significant natural sources of pollution, releasing large quantities of harmful gases during eruptions. Their emissions include carbon dioxide, fatal in large concentrations, and hydrogen sulfide, capable of killing humans at concentrations of less than one part per thousand. Volcanic particles can carry arsenic, lead, and mercury. Wildfires, sometimes sparked by lightning, send carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and fine particulates into the air, posing real risks to animals. But pollution generally implies a human source. Motor vehicle emissions are among the leading causes of air pollution, with China, the United States, Russia, India, Mexico, and Japan leading the world in such emissions. About 400 million metric tons of hazardous wastes are generated each year, with the United States alone producing about 250 million metric tons. Americans make up less than five percent of the world's population, yet generate roughly thirty percent of its waste. In 2007, China overtook the United States as the world's biggest producer, though it ranked 78th by per capita pollution. Some sources are deliberate, and some are disguised. A series of press reports in 2001, culminating in the book Fateful Harvest, revealed a widespread practice of recycling industrial leftovers into fertilizer, poisoning the soil with metals. Plastic adds a problem that refuses to end. With the exception of a small amount that has been incinerated, virtually every piece of plastic ever made still exists in one form or another. Because most plastics do not biodegrade, that waste could persist for hundreds or even thousands of years, and may eventually outweigh fish in the oceans.

• 5. The Toll On Bodies

  ›

  An October 2017 study by the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health concluded that pollution is one of the great existential challenges of the Anthropocene era. The same study found that toxic air, water, soil, and workplaces kill nine million people annually. Ozone pollution can cause respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, throat inflammation, chest pain, and congestion. Particular countries carry particular burdens. A 2010 analysis estimated that 1.2 million people died prematurely each year in China alone because of air pollution. In 2019, air pollution caused 1.67 million deaths in India, 17.8 percent of the nation's total deaths. In the United States, a 2022 study in GeoHealth concluded that energy-related fossil fuel emissions cause 46,900 to 59,400 premature deaths each year, with related illness and death costing the nation 537 to 678 billion dollars annually. Water carries its own death toll. In 2019, water pollution caused 1.4 million premature deaths. Over 732 million Indians, 56 percent of the population, and over 92 million Ethiopians, 92.9 percent of the population, lack access to basic sanitation. In 2013, more than 10 million people in India fell ill with waterborne illnesses and 1,535 died, most of them children. Individual pollutants leave specific marks. Mercury has been linked to developmental deficits in children and neurologic symptoms. Lead and other heavy metals can cause neurological problems, intellectual disabilities, and behavioural problems. Children, infants, older people, and those with heart or lung disorders all face heightened risk.

• 6. Burden And Power

  ›

  Polluting industries and toxic waste sites tend to be collocated with populations that hold less economic and political power. That pattern falls hardest on vulnerable groups, including children, the elderly, and marginalized communities. This outsized impact is a core reason the environmental justice movement formed. It remains a central element of environmental conflicts, particularly in the Global South. The harm extends past health into the fabric of society. A 2021 study found that exposure to pollution causes an increase in violent crime. A 2019 paper linked pollution to adverse school outcomes for children. Several studies show pollution reduces the productivity of both indoor and outdoor workers. Economists frame the imbalance in their own terms. A manufacturing activity that causes air pollution is a negative externality in production, occurring when a firm's production reduces the well-being of others who are not compensated. A laundry firm near a polluting steel manufacturer faces higher costs from the dirt and smoke. Because the externality is not priced into the market, such goods tend to be overproduced and underpriced, an outcome economists call a market failure.

• 7. The Long Reckoning

  ›

  Soot on the ceilings of prehistoric caves offers evidence of the pollution that came with inadequate ventilation of open fires. According to a 1983 article in the journal Science, pollution started when humans created the first fires. Core samples of glaciers in Greenland show increases in pollution tied to Greek, Roman, and Chinese metal production. King Edward I of England banned the burning of mineral coal by proclamation in London in 1306, after its smoke became a problem. The fuel was named seacoal, because it was delivered from overseas. The Industrial Revolution changed the scale entirely. London recorded one of the earliest extreme cases of water trouble with the Great Stink on the Thames of 1858, which led to the construction of the London sewerage system soon after. In 1870, the sanitary conditions in Berlin were among the worst in Europe. August Bebel recalled waste-water collecting in gutters and emitting a truly fearsome smell, with no public toilets in the streets, and wrote that Berlin did not emerge from a state of barbarism into civilization until after 1870. The fight moved across the Atlantic and into the modern age. Chicago and Cincinnati were the first two American cities to enact laws ensuring cleaner air, in 1881. Three million horses worked in American cities in 1900, generating urine and manure, and by the 1940s automobile-caused smog had become a significant issue in Los Angeles. The Great Smog of 1952 in London killed at least 4,000 people, prompting the Clean Air Act of 1956.

• 8. Disaster And Response

  ›

  Lake Karachay was named by the Worldwatch Institute as the most polluted spot on earth, having served as a Soviet disposal site throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Chelyabinsk, Russia, is considered the most polluted place on the planet. Radioactive contamination can remain lethally radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, a danger that gives nuclear power its lingering specter of public mistrust. Incidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima drew intense worldwide publicity. Catastrophes pushed the response across borders. The wreck of the Amoco Cadiz oil tanker off the coast of Brittany in 1978 and the Bhopal disaster in 1984 showed the universal scale of such events. National news stories about the dioxin contamination at Love Canal, starting in 1947, and uncontrolled dumping in the Valley of the Drums led to the Superfund legislation of 1980. PCB dumping in the Hudson River brought an EPA ban on consumption of its fish in 1974. The work of mitigation continues to widen. The Pure Earth, a non-profit dedicated to eliminating life-threatening pollution in the developing world, named lead-acid battery recycling at the top of its 2016 list of the world's most polluting industries. In September 2023, a Global Framework on Chemicals was agreed in Bonn, Germany, with 28 targets, including a goal to end the use of hazardous pesticides in agriculture where the risks have not been managed by 2035.