Industrial Revolution, water pollution

When a country is very sparsely populated, as was the U.S. prior to the Industrial Revolution, the extent of land, water and other natural resources seems infinite. Disposal of liquid and solid wastes in those days wasn t even thought of as pollution . In fact, most of the wastes were organic, and readily absorbed into nature without deleterious effects. With industrialization, and the related growth of urbanization, the volume of wastes grew dramatically, and included large percentages of materials that nature could not degrade and absorb. Some of these materials were health hazards, notably petroleum residues and, more recently, radioactive materials. 

Factories have contaminated streams since the dawn of the industrial revolution, and governments have long taken notice. As early as 1901, a survey article could report that the only jurisdictions in the United States that lacked statutes to control water pollution—which was understood to include both industrial waste and sewage—were Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, South Carolina, and Indian Territory (the future Oklahoma). By 1924, all 48 states had laws that covered industrial waste. Both surface water and groundwater were always understood to be vulnerable to contamination by the mid-nineteenth century, lawsuits over pollution of groundwater were numerous.16... 

For much of history, humans used waterways and bodies of water as waste dumps. When the human population was low, fewer people were exposed to the effects of pollution, and the sources were fewer and produced less pollution. During the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, water pollution was recognized as a danger to public health. 

All of this changed with the industrial revolution. Large-scale soil, water, and air pollution began to occur as a result of heavy industries such as the production of iron and steel, as well as industrial mining and petroleum extraction. These industries distributed chemical risk beyond the individual level to that of the community. Epidemiology, the branch of medicine that deals with the incidence and distribution of disease conditions in defined human populations, joined forces with toxicology, and studies began to assess the relative risk that chemical exposures exacted upon human communities and populations. 

Modem river pollution in England is traced to about 1810 with the introduction of the modem "water-carriage system for towns and cities to dispose of sewage directly into rivers. This problem was exacerbated during the Industrial Revolution, with factories built along rivers, and with discharge of wastes from tanneries, paper mills, chemical works, and gas works. This resulted by the early 19 century in the virtual disappearance of fish, aquatic organisms, and plants in these areas. 

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