Lecture 6 - Technology and Pollution

Hughes. Among the ancients pollution meant contaminating the water, smoke and noxious odors in the air, waste from humans, animals, and fowl, and production by- and end-products. Ancients commented on linkages between increased efficiency of technology and increased demands placed on environment thru extraction of resources, manufacturing processes, and end-production pollution.

Extractive industries included mining, quarrying, digging for pottery, glass, bricks, concrete, mortar, fertilizer, limestone, marble. Concrete + mortar could be used for underwater piles.

Greeks used open pit, tunnels, open chambers techniques used. Minerals mined: gold, auriferous quartz and auriferous galena (silver), copper (chalcopyrite), iron from pyrite and hematite, zinc from calamine, mercury from cinnabar.

Ancient Copper Mining in Cyprus

Sixty Centuries of Copper by B Webster Smith which was published by the UK Copper Development Association in 1965.

Salt mines used quarrying techniques.

Romans added hydraulic mining; used sluice technology. Water was used to separate ore from over burden (sluices and settling tanks). By product was poisonous metallic salts polluting water run-off ruining water for drinking or irrigation.

The state typically controlled mining operations leasing them to private entrepreneurs who turn used slave labor. Stone was cut by picks and hammers. Bronze saws were used in quarrying. Rocks were broken by heating stones and pouring vinegar on them to crack them. (Egyptians in colder climes drill holes in limestone, poured water holes, froze - expanding ice cracked rocks.)

Ancients had technology to light tunnels with fatwood, oil and wick lamps.

Drainages of mines was accomplished using Archimedean screw, piston pumps, waterwheels. Underground streams were diverted.

Massive amounts of wood used for energy and timber to shore up mine tunnels led to deforestation.

Water divertion led to erosion.

All digging operations led to scarring of land.

Dust led to air pollution. Miners breathed toxic dust that discolored skin, lung diseases, or poisoned them.

Metallurgy - separation of metals from ores, smiths work metal in jewelry, tools, utensils, armor, and weapons.

Ceramics, glass, pottery, and brick production kilns. Limestone kilns for fertilizer, plaster, mortar.

Gimpel. Medieval Period. Quarrying for stone for construction of buildings, bridges, and highways. Mining galleries were found under many medieval cities, Paris, Nuremberg. In some cases after stone was removed, the tunnel were converted to water courses or sewers.

Mining for iron ore was of paramount importance. Iron was used for weapons, armor, for horseshoes, agricultural tools. Nails of a variety of sizes were produced. Iron was used to replace wooden parts in many water driven machines.

Silver, gold, lead, tin were sought after metals. Metallurgy and smithing were major occupations. As in the Roman era kings and emperors established control over mining operations. Major source of income. In England laws were passed which allowed access to timber and setting up mining operations on anyone's property. (Appalachian coal operations?)

In Medieval Period industrialization led to deforestation. Wood was used for castles, houses, water mills, windmills, bridges, military installation, ship building, casks, vats, looms, rope, charcoal for smelters, kilns. Amounts for each construction were prodigious. A wood burning economy cast a permanent smoking pall over urbs.

Substitution of sea coal led to reports of air pollution in London and bans against its burning in late 1200s.