Urban Environmental Problems

Earth, Wind, and Fire

Urban environmental problems

◦ 19th-century health problems

◦ Epidemics: Yellow fever; cholera; smallpox; typhoid fever; typhus

◦ Endemic diseases: Scarlet fever; tuberculosis; diphtheria

◦ “Miasmas” and disease

◦ Filth, dirt, & poverty: sources of disease

◦ Poor’s physical, moral, productive condition

Sanitation and Garbage

◦ Dumping in lots, rivers, or the sea

Cleaning up water

◦ Purification of drinking water

◦ Sand or mechanical filtration

◦ Acceptance of Pasteur’s theory by 1900

◦ Chlorine (after 1908)

◦ Issues

◦ Water closets: need for water & sewers

◦ Water use skyrockets

◦ Creating water supplies
in other people’s back yards

Rise of urban pollution control

◦ Sewer-building programs by 1880s

◦ Cesspits pollute wells

◦ Sewers dump directly into streams

◦ By 1890s: demand for change

◦ Garbage, foul smells, health hazards

◦ Polluted water & typhoid

◦ Rise of citizen groups: middle-class women

◦ New profession: sanitary engineering

◦ Sewage treatment is expensive and lagslags

◦ Industrial pollution ignored

◦ Too expensive; economic power of industries

◦ Fish kills not a political issue

Urban air pollution

◦ Atmospheric inversion

◦ Location of cities near water for power and transportation

Energy transition and the air

◦ From renewable energy of muscle and wood

◦ Cheap, polluting bituminous coal

◦ Expensive, cleaner anthracite less used

◦ Railroads

◦ Factories

◦ Blots out sun; covers everything in soot

◦ Sickens people

◦ Trees die

◦ Foundations, viaducts, statues crumble

Fighting air pollution

◦ Civic & women’s groups attack smoke nuisance

◦ Smoke Abatement Leagues

◦ Passage of local smoke legislation

◦ Newspapers attack lenient judges

◦ Uphill fight

◦ Smoke = progress, prosperity