Inventing Pollution

Author : Peter Thorsheim
Publisher : Ohio University Press
ISBN 13 : 0821446274
Total Pages : 429 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Inventing Pollution written by Peter Thorsheim and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-16 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Going 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. 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 thinking about the relationships among humanity, technology, and the environment. Even as coal production in Britain has plummeted in recent decades, it has surged in other countries. This reissue of Thorsheim’s far-reaching study includes a new preface that reveals the book’s relevance to the contentious national and international debates—which aren’t going away anytime soon—around coal, air pollution more generally, and the grave threat of human-induced climate change.

Author : Arthur P. Molella
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 0262633280
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Inventing for the Environment written by Arthur P. Molella and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2005-09-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays by historians and practioners on how invention can benefit the environment. This ambitious book describes the many ways in which invention affects the environment (here defined broadly to include all forms of interaction between humans and nature). The book starts with nature itself and then leads readers to examine the built environment and then specific technologies in areas such as public health and energy. Each part focuses on a single environmental issue. Topics range widely, from the role of innovation in urban landscapes to the relationship among technological innovation, public health, and the environment. Each part features an essay by a historian, an essay by a practitioner, and a "portrait of innovation" describing an individual whose work has made a difference. The mixture of historians and practitioners is critical because statements about the environment inevitably measure present and future conditions against those of the past. Early in the industrial revolution, smoke stacks were symbols of prosperity; at its end they were regarded as signs of pollution. Historical examples can also lead to the rediscovery of an old technology, as in the revival of straw bale construction. As it explores the history of invention for the environment, the book suggests many new ways to put the past to use for the common good.

Author : Bill Luckin
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN 13 : 0822987449
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Mighty Capital under Threat written by Bill Luckin and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demographically, nineteenth-century London, or what Victorians called the “new Rome,” first equaled, then superseded its ancient ancestor. By the mid-eighteenth century, the British capital had already developed into a global city. Sustained by its enormous empire, between 1800 and the First World War London ballooned in population and land area. Nothing so vast had previously existed anywhere. A Mighty Capital under Threat investigates the environmental history of one of the world’s global cities and the largest city in the United Kingdom. Contributors cover the feeding of London, waste management, movement between the city’s numerous districts, and the making and shaping of the environmental sciences in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Author : Peter Joseph Thorsheim
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 412 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Inventing Air Pollution written by Peter Joseph Thorsheim and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Susan Freinkel
Publisher : HMH
ISBN 13 : 0547549148
Total Pages : 341 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Plastic written by Susan Freinkel and published by HMH. This book was released on 2011-04-18 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This eloquent, elegant book thoughtfully plumbs the . . . consequences of our dependence on plastics” (The Boston Globe, A Best Nonfiction Book of 2011). From pacemakers to disposable bags, plastic built the modern world. But a century into our love affair, we’re starting to realize it’s not such a healthy relationship. As journalist Susan Freinkel points out in this eye-opening book, we’re at a crisis point. Plastics draw on dwindling fossil fuels, leach harmful chemicals, litter landscapes, and destroy marine life. We’re drowning in the stuff, and we need to start making some hard choices. Freinkel tells her story through eight familiar plastic objects: a comb, a chair, a Frisbee, an IV bag, a disposable lighter, a grocery bag, a soda bottle, and a credit card. With a blend of lively anecdotes and analysis, she sifts through scientific studies and economic data, reporting from China and across the United States to assess the real impact of plastic on our lives. Her conclusion is severe, but not without hope. Plastic points the way toward a new creative partnership with the material we love, hate, and can’t seem to live without. “When you write about something so ubiquitous as plastic, you must be prepared to write in several modes, and Freinkel rises to this task. . . . She manages to render the most dull chemical reaction into vigorous, breathless sentences.” —SF Gate “Freinkel’s smart, well-written analysis of this love-hate relationship is likely to make plastic lovers take pause, plastic haters reluctantly realize its value, and all of us understand the importance of individual action, political will, and technological innovation in weaning us off our addiction to synthetics.” —Publishers Weekly “A compulsively interesting story. Buy it (with cash).” —Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature “What a great read—rigorous, smart, inspiring, and as seductive as plastic itself.” —Karim Rashid, designer

Author : Andrew C. Isenberg
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190673486
Total Pages : 801 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Environmental History written by Andrew C. Isenberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-14 with total page 801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the methodology of environmental history, with an emphasis on the field's interaction with other historiographies such as consumerism, borderlands, and gender. It examines the problem of environmental context, specifically the problem and perception of environmental determinism, by focusing on climate, disease, fauna, and regional environments. It also considers the changing understanding of scientific knowledge.

Author : Jeremy Colls
Publisher : CRC Press
ISBN 13 : 1351988468
Total Pages : 700 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Air Pollution written by Jeremy Colls and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A one stop, comprehensive textbook, covering the three essential components of air pollution science. The Third Edition has been updated with the latest developments, especially the inclusion of new information on the role of air pollutants in climate change. The authors give greater coverage to the developing economies around the world where air pollution problems are on the rise. The Third Edition continues to cover a wide range of air quality issues, retaining a quantitative perspective. Topics covered include - gaseous and particulate air pollutants, measurement techniques, meteorology and dispersion modelling, mobile sources, indoor air, effects on plants, materials, humans and animals. Moving away from classical toxic air pollutants, there is a chapter on climate change and another on the depletion of stratospheric ozone. A special feature of this new edition is the inclusion of a fresh chapter on air pollution mitigation by vegetation, mainly its role in maintaining a sustainable urban environment. Recommended for upper-level undergraduate and postgraduate courses specialising in air pollution, both for environmental scientists and engineers. The new material included in the Third Edition extends its use by practitioners in consultancies or local authorities.

Author : John Wargo
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300156383
Total Pages : 394 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Green Intelligence written by John Wargo and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-29 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a world awash in manmade chemicals, from the pesticides on our front lawns to the diesel exhaust in the air we breathe. Although experts are beginning to understand the potential dangers of these substances, there are still more than 80,000 synthetic compounds that have not been sufficiently tested to interpret their effects on human health. Yale University professor John Wargo has spent much of his career researching the impact of chemical exposures on women and children. In this book, he explains the origins of society’s profound misunderstanding of everyday chemical hazards and offers a practical path toward developing greater “green intelligence.” Despite the rising trend in environmental awareness, information about synthetic substances is often unavailable, distorted, kept secret, or presented in a way that prevents citizens from acting to reduce threats to their health and the environment. By examining the histories of five hazardous technologies and practices, Wargo finds remarkable patterns in the delayed discovery of dangers and explains the governments’ failures to manage them effectively. Sobering yet eminently readable, Wargo’s book ultimately offers a clear vision for a safer future through prevention, transparency, and awareness.

Author : J. R. McNeill
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 111897753X
Total Pages : 578 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Companion to Global Environmental History written by J. R. McNeill and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-05-04 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Companion to Global Environmental History offers multiple points of entry into the history and historiography of this dynamic and fast-growing field, to provide an essential road map to past developments, current controversies, and future developments for specialists and newcomers alike. Combines temporal, geographic, thematic and contextual approaches from prehistory to the present day Explores environmental thought and action around the world, to give readers a cultural, intellectual and political context for engagement with the environment in modern times Brings together environmental historians from around the world, including scholars from South Africa, Brazil, Germany, and China

Author : Martin Reuss
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 0813930537
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Illusory Boundary written by Martin Reuss and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2010-09-20 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The view of nature and technology inhabiting totally different, even opposite, spheres persists across time and cultures. Most people would consider an English countryside or a Louisiana bayou to be "natural," though each is to an extent the product of technology. Pollution, widely thought to be a purely man-made phenomenon, results partly from natural processes. All around us, things from the natural world are brought into the human world. At what point do we consider them part of culture rather than nature? And does such a distinction illuminate our world or obscure its workings? This compelling new book challenges the view that a clear and unwavering boundary exists between nature and technology. Rejecting this dichotomy, the contributors show how the history of each can be united in a constantly shifting panorama where definitions of "nature" and "technology" alter and overlap. In addition to recognizing the artificial divide between these two concepts, the essays in this book demonstrate how such thinking may affect societies’ ability to survive and prosper. The answers and ideas are as numerous as the landscapes they consider, for there is no single path toward a more harmonious vision of technology and nature. Technologies that work in one place may not in another. Nature that is preserved in one community might become the raw material of technological progress somewhere else. Add to this the fact that the natural world and technology are not passive players, but are profoundly involved in cultural construction. Understanding such dynamics not only reveals a new historical complexity; it prepares us for coping with many of the most difficult and pressing social issues facing us today. Contributors Peter Coates * Craig E. Colten * Stephen H. Cutcliffe * Hugh S. Gorman * Betsy Mendelsohn * Joy Parr * Peter C. Perdue * Sara B. Pritchard * Martin Reuss * William D. Rowley * Edmund Russell * Joel A. Tarr * Ann Vileisis * James C. Williams * Thomas Zeller