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London's Great Stink
- deepnet 3y agoBragg & Guests discuss the Great Stink - In Our Time. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001gjcm https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001gjcm
- disadvantage 3y ago> Consultant engineer Joseph Bazalgette, who was already working as a surveyor for the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, was employed to mastermind a plan for sewers, pumping stations and the redevelopment of the embankments of London. The results of his remarkable efforts are still maintaining London’s health today. The Great Stink may not have the historic cachet of the Great Fire or the Plague of London, but its influence was ultimately to the good of the city. Now the UK still has to deal with smog. Cars might be all electric in my lifetime, but smog is still a persistent problem and causes respiratory problems.
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- boringg 3y agoHow would the cars (And heavy duty vehicles) being all electric/hydrogen not solve the smog problem?
- dkdbejwi383 3y agoElectric cars only get rid of tailpipe emissions. Cars still leave other contaminants via their tyres, for instance
- mikestew 3y agoWhat do those “other contaminants” that aren’t tailpipe emissions have to do with smog?
- ggm 3y agoAt least one book I have read about the rise of plastics said that during the worst years of rubber shortages in WW2 there were serious proposals to scrape roads and recover tire materials in the USA. I believe the discovery of stable artificial rubber materials, capable of being produced in volume in time for the D Day landings helped with the supply chain crisis as the armed forces moved forward (the rate of supply became a major issue and logistics demands were high)
- tcmart14 3y agoI've heard that break dust is also really carcinogenic.
- boringg 3y agoWhile that is true it that has little to do with smog. Smog is air contaminants.
- wigster 3y agoa descendent of Bazalgette invented the Big Brother reality TV show. I always think they reversed the process established by their ancestor and started pumping shit back into our homes.
- throwup238 3y agoThe laws of the conservation of shit are immutable and inescapable. You can displace shit in spacetime but eventually it comes back.
- jiveturkey 3y agoWe very consistently repeat this. Plastics, PFAS. Carbon ... Until it's staring us right in the face, we just keep piling on. Our new problems aren't so easily remedied.
- londons_explore 3y agoThing is, there are also other things that initially look bad (eg. "vaccines linked to autism"), but then turn out to not be bad at all. Or things that are understood to be bad, but people choose to take the risk (Smoking). Or things that are known to be bad, but the benefits appear to outweigh the costs (eating meat). It's hard to draw the line on exactly how much evidence is needed before governments should outlaw something...
- jrajav 3y agoNothing about "vaccines linked to autism" ever looked bad. It was one study with sample size n=12, widely and firmly discredited, then used as the basis for a huge epidemic of motivated anti-intellectualism. Whatever the amount of evidence is that is appropriate to build regulations on, it's certainly far, far above that.
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- deciplex 3y agoA contemporary issue in the US was the anaerobic lagoon in Washington DC which almost certainly led to the death of one President, William Henry Harrison, and likely two (the other being Zachary Taylor).
- IncreasePosts 3y agoWell, that's reassuring to hear about the Taylor theory. I grew up with the belief that eating too much cherry ice cream could kill you.
- ta8645 3y agoKagi search results say it might have even been three: https://rickdunhamblog.com/2014/04/02/toxic-white-house-water-might-have-killed-three-u-s-presidents-harrison-polk-and-taylor/ https://rickdunhamblog.com/2014/04/02/toxic-white-house-wate...
- dredmorbius 3y agoOn Harrison's death: <https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/59/7/990/2895539 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/59/7/990/2895539>
- scrlk 3y ago> "The Thames, used for centuries as a convenient dumping ground for sewage..." Still continues to this day. > "Thames Water has pumped at least 72bn litres of sewage into the River Thames since 2020..." > "In most areas there are not volume measuring devices, but Thames Water use sewage monitors to measure volume in some locations. The water company used them while making the Thames Tideway, and they are the only known monitors of the kind fitted in the country. Because they do not cover the entire network, it is likely far more sewage was released than that measured." https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/10/thames-water-pumped-sewage-into-thames https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/10/thames-w...
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- kristianp 3y agoWow, I always assumed it was pumped far out to sea. Is it treated first?
- bobthepanda 3y agoNot currently; if the system is overwhelmed and the treatment plants start backing up then untreated water will be released in an emergency to prevent sewer from flooding up into the streets. They are currently spending 4.3B pounds to fix it with basically a giant holding tunnel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Tideway_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Tideway_Tunnel
- nextos 3y agoUnfortunately, Thames Water infrastructure, once state-of-the-art, is really old and it shows. It needs some serious investment to bring it to modern standards. In Oxford, I have noticed raw sewage floating in the river several times. Things were pretty bad and authorities have sometimes issued a warning to potential swimmers. In the market town Thame, next to the eponymous river Thames, there were frequent leaks to the main street pavement. Really disgusting and sad as it is otherwise a very cool area.
- ProfessorLayton 3y agoI'm always fascinated by moments in history this, since it feels so hard to believe it happened in the first place. Even though this was happening before germ theory, it makes intuitive sense to not crap into the same water supply that gets consumed? Anyway, the kicker is that we're doing something similar today! Climate change aside, we spew tons of noxious gasses and particulate from diesel/gas/ships right into the air we breathe in.
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- Avicebron 3y agoI agree that it makes intuitive sense (albeit from a 2024 perspective obviously, hard to tell from theirs) But when I learned about it, I believe part of the issue was that the speed at which industrialization happened overshot the ability of the infrastructure to keep up, also the increase in population, decrease in living conditions in london, made those kind of concerns secondary to things like food
- DarkNova6 3y ago[flagged]
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- mrlonglong 3y agoThanks to our current Tory Government we are now currently experiencing great stink all around our coasts due to the sewage that the Tories voted to permit without treatment. This makes me very angry and generally known as a bad move. I'm really looking forward to the General Election soon and make my views known at the ballot box.
- tomcam 3y agoBut enough about Sam Smith