The Study On Victorian British City's Air Pollution And Abatement

During the Victorian Era, the most proud times of the British Empire, industrialization and urbanization developed rapidly. However, a series of social problems had been brought. One of the social problems bearing the brunt was air pollution, which was closely related to urban residents.During the Victorian Era, heavy air pollution in British cities posed a serious respiratory diseases among urban residents and even led to increased mortality, seriously affected the normal work and life of urban residents. The causes of air pollution at that time were mainly the following. First, with the development of industry, coal was widely used. Second, the chemical industry with the center of alkali developed rapidly. Third, along with the city developing and the population increasing, household energy consumption and living garbage increased sharply. Faced with this serious social problem, the British government controlled the pollution by legal means as the major measure, supplemented by administrative means and economic means. Some insight British created an environmental non- governmental organization aiming at governing and improving the air pollution. They controlled air pollution through a variety of ways. At the same time, some engineers and technical workers employed by enterprises also indirectly had carried on the unremitting efforts to control air pollution.However, the efforts of the British government and society did not make urban air pollution situation completely improved. The fundamental reason was: under the circumstances of rapid economic development of capitalism, the various social strata were in the pursuit of material interest. In addition, the environmental bill enacted by the British parliament had not been strongly enforced, the central and local governments were lacking coordination and coherence, the environmental non-governmental organizations was lacking occupational management, people's awareness of environmental protection were weak and science and technology was not developed, etc. All these factors resulted that the effect on urban air pollution was not obvious in Victorian era, which indirectly led to the British urban air pollution "catastrophe" of the early 20 th century.