Timeline of pollution

From Timelines
Revision as of 09:55, 29 April 2019 by Sebastian (talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search

This is a timeline of FIXME.

Big picture

Time period Development summary
19th – 20th centuries "caused considerable air pollution, and the conversion of coal to coke for iron smelting beginning in the 17th century exacerbated the problem. "[1] "By the late 18th century and first part of the 19th century, coal came into large-scale use during the Industrial Revolution. The resulting smog and soot had serious health impacts on the residents of growing urban centers." Industrial revolution "Along with amazing technological advances, the Industrial Revolution of the mid-19th century introduced new sources of air and water pollution. "[2]
20th century "By the middle of the 20th century, the effects of these changes were beginning to be felt in countries around the world. In the 1960s, an environmental movement began to emerge that sought to stem the tide of pollutants flowing into the planet’s ecosystems."[2]

Full timeline

Year Event type Details Location
Prehistory Pollution starts early, when humans create the first fires. Also, there is evidence of human-induced animal and plant extinctions from 50,000 BCE, when only about 200,000 Homo sapiens roamed the Earth.[3]
5000 BC Ecological awareness appears this early with Vedic sages praising the wild forests in their hymns, Taoists urging that human life should reflect nature’s patterns and the Buddha teaching compassion for all sentient beings.[3] Indian subcontinent
1000 CE The use of coal for fuel causes considerable air pollution in cities.[1]
1272 Policy King Edward I of England bans the burning of sea-coal by proclamation in London, after its smoke becomes a problem.[2] United Kingdom
1525–1569 Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder paints scenes of raw sewage and other pollution emptying into rivers.[3] Netherlands
1609 Literature Dutch lawyer Hugo Grotius writes Mare Liberum ("The Freedom of the Seas"), claiming that pollution and war violate natural law.[3] Netherlands
1793 The 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic occurs. After the crisis, Benjamin Franklin petitions to manage waste and to remove tanneries for clean air as a public “right”.[3] United States
1798 Literature English cleric Thomas Malthus publishes An Essay on the Principle of Population, warning that human overpopulation would lead to ecological destruction.[3]
1824 Modern understanding of how certain atmospheric gases trap heat originates when French mathematician Joseph Fourier describes the greenhouse effect.[4] France
1850s Crisis Acid rain is first discovered. By the time it is another problem resulting from coal-powered plants.[2]
1862 Scientific development Irish physicist John Tyndall discovers that certain gases (water and carbon dioxide) help trap heat from escaping the atmosphere.[4] Ireland
1892 (May 28) Organization Sierra Club is founded in San Francisco, California. It was one of the first large-scale environmental preservation organizations in the world.[5]
1895 Scientific development Swedish Chemist Svante Arrhenius observes the infrared-absorbing properties of carbon dioxide and water molecules.[4]
1948 Crisis The worst single incident of air pollution in the United States occurs in Donora, Pennsylvania, when severe industrial air pollution create a deadly smog. 20 people die and over 7,000 are injured.[6][2] United States
1974 (September 22) Organization Central Pollution Control Board is formed.[7]
1952 Crisis The Great Smog of London occurs. Pollutants from factories and home fireplaces mix with air condensation, killing at least 4,000 people over the course of several days.[2] United Kingdom
1962 Literature American biologist Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring, which focuses attention on environmental damage caused by improper use of pesticides such as DDT and other persistent chemicals that accumulate in the food chain and disrupt the natural balance of ecosystems on a wide scale.[1] United States
1963 Policy The United States Congress passes the Clean Air Act legislation, in an effort to reduce air pollution. The law would be amended and strengthened in the ensuing decades.[2] United States
1967 Organization Environmental Defense Fund is formed.[8]
1969 Organization Greenpeace is formed.[3]
1969 Organization Pollution Probe is founded.[9][10] Canada
1971 Organization Earthjustice is founded.
1972 (June 5) United Nations Environment Programme is launched
1973 MARPOL 73/78
1979 (November 13) Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution opens for signature. It would enter into force on March 16, 1983.
1979 "An accidental leak of anthrax spores from a biological warfare laboratory in the former USSR in 1979 near Sverdlovsk is believed to have caused at least 64 deaths."[11]
1980 Organization The Centre for Science and Environment is founded in India
1982 (December 10) The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is signed.
1984 Crisis "The world's worst short-term civilian pollution crisis was the 1984 Bhopal Disaster in India.[12] Leaked industrial vapours from the Union Carbide factory, belonging to Union Carbide, Inc., U.S.A. (later bought by Dow Chemical Company), killed at least 3787 people and injured from 150,000 to 600,000."
1987 (August 26) The Montreal Protocol is signed. It would become effective on August 26, 1989
1989 (March 22) Basel Convention is signed. It would become effective on May 5, 1992. Switzerland
1991 The United Nations Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Pollution estimates that up to 80% of the pollution is land-based,[13] with the remaining 20% originating from catastrophic events or maritime sources.[14]
1992 (September 22) The Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic opens for signature at the Ministerial Meeting of the Oslo and Paris Commissions in Paris.
1993 (October 30) Organization European Environment Agency is formed.
1994 Study of the seabed using trawl nets in the North-Western Mediterranean around the coasts of Spain, France, and Italy reports mean concentrations of debris of 1,935 items per square kilometer. Plastic debris accounted for 77%, of which 93% was plastic bags.[15]
1995 Organization The British Environment Agency is formed.
1997 Kyoto Protocol Japan
1997 Organization Basel Action Network is founded.
1998 (September 10) Rotterdam Convention is signed. It would become effective on 24 February 2004.
1999 In samples taken from the North Pacific Gyre by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, the mass of plastic is found to exceed that of zooplankton by a factor of six.[16][17]
2001 (May 22) Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants is signed. It would become effective on 17 May 2004. Sweden
2001 (June) The British Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is formed.
2007 ". In 2007, CNN reported that “up to 500 million tons of heavy metals, solvents and toxic sludge slip into the global water supply every year."[2]
2007 China overtakes the United States as the world's biggest producer of CO2.[18]
2009 Organization Plastic Pollution Coalition} is founded.
2010 AStudy estimates that 1.2 million people die prematurely each year in China because of air pollution.[19]
2010 Program Plastic Disclosure Project.
2011 Large Danish epidemiological study finds an increased risk of lung cancer for patients who live in areas with high nitrogen oxide concentrations. In this study, the association was higher for non-smokers than smokers.[20] An additional study likewise notes evidence of possible associations between air pollution and other forms of cancer, including cervical cancer and brain cancer.[21]
2013 Organization The Ocean Cleanup is founded.
2013 Debris from six beaches in Korea is collected and analyzed: 56% is found to be "ocean-based" and 44% "land-based".[22]
2013 (December) Air pollution is estimated to kill 500,000 people in China each year.[23] China
2014 The World Health Organization finds open defecation to be a leading cause of diarrheal death. An average of 2,000 children under the age of five die every day from diarrhea.[24]
2014 Study In a study using computer models, scientists estimate 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic weighing 269,000 tons are dispersed in oceans in similar amount in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and one-hundredth of them are particles the scale of a sand.[25]
2014 Environmental impact of shipping: The International Maritime Organization (IMO) estimates that carbon dioxide emissions from shipping were equal to 2.2% of the global human-made emissions in the year[26] and expects them to rise 50 to 250 percent by 2050 if no action is taken.[27]
2014 (June) "In a June 2014 study conducted by researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, it was discovered that early exposure to air pollution causes the same damaging changes in the brain as autism and schizophrenia. The study also shows that air pollution also affected short-term memory, learning ability, and impulsivity. Lead researcher Professor Deborah Cory-Slechta said that "When we looked closely at the ventricles, we could see that the white matter that normally surrounds them hadn't fully developed. It appears that inflammation had damaged those brain cells and prevented that region of the brain from developing, and the ventricles simply expanded to fill the space. Our findings add to the growing body of evidence that air pollution may play a role in autism, as well as in other neurodevelopmental disorders." Air pollution has a more significant negative effect on males than on females."[28][29][30]
2014 Air pollution The World Health Organization estimates that every year air pollution causes the premature death of some 7 million people worldwide.[31]
2015 (December) Medical scientists report that cancer is overwhelmingly a result of environmental factors, and not largely down to bad luck.[32]
2017 Study by the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health finds that global pollution, specifically toxic air, water, soils and workplaces, kill nine million people annually, which is triple the number of deaths caused by AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined, and 15 times higher than deaths caused by wars and other forms of human violence.[33]
2050 Some researchers suggest that by the time there could be more plastic than fish in the oceans by weight.[34]

Meta information on the timeline

How the timeline was built

The initial version of the timeline was written by FIXME.

Funding information for this timeline is available.

Feedback and comments

Feedback for the timeline can be provided at the following places:

  • FIXME

What the timeline is still missing

Timeline update strategy

See also

External links

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Pollution". britannica.com. Retrieved 26 April 2019. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 "Water and Air Pollution". history.com. Retrieved 26 April 2019. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 "A Brief History of Environmentalism". greenpeace.org. Retrieved 29 April 2019. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "Why we know about the greenhouse gas effect". blogs.scientificamerican.com. Retrieved 29 April 2019. 
  5. ↑ "About the Sierra Club". Sierra Club. 
  6. ↑ Davis, Devra (2002). When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-01521-4. 
  7. ↑ "Central Pollution Control Board". cpcb.nic.in. Retrieved 29 April 2019. 
  8. ↑ "Our story: How EDF got started". edf.org. Retrieved 29 April 2019. 
  9. ↑ "Pollution Probe Foundation". thecanadianencyclopedia.ca. Retrieved 29 April 2019. 
  10. ↑ "About Pollution Probe". pollutionprobe.org. Retrieved 29 April 2019. 
  11. ↑ Meselson M, Guillemin J, Hugh-Jones M, et al. (November 1994). "The Sverdlovsk anthrax outbreak of 1979" (PDF). Science. 266 (5188): 1202–08. PMID 7973702. doi:10.1126/science.7973702. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-09-21. 
  12. ↑ Simi Chakrabarti. "20th anniversary of world's worst industrial disaster". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 
  13. ↑ Sheavly, S. B.; Register, K. M. (2007). "Marine Debris & Plastics: Environmental Concerns, Sources, Impacts and Solutions". Journal of Polymers and the Environment. 15 (4): 301–305. doi:10.1007/s10924-007-0074-3. 
  14. ↑ Weiss, K.R. (2017). "The pileup of plastic debris is more than ugly ocean litter". Knowable Magazine. doi:10.1146/knowable-120717-211902. Archived from the original on 9 December 2017. 
  15. ↑ "Marine Litter: An analytical overview" (PDF). United Nations Environment Programme. 2005. Archived (PDF) from the original on 17 July 2007. Retrieved 1 August 2008. 
  16. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Weisman
  17. ↑ "Plastics and Marine Debris". Algalita Marine Research Foundation. 2006. Archived from the original on 14 July 2010. Retrieved 1 July 2008. 
  18. ↑ "China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter". theguardian.com. Retrieved 26 April 2019. 
  19. ↑ Wong, Edward (26 April 2019). "Air Pollution Linked to 1.2 Million Deaths in China". Nytimes.com. Retrieved 1 December 2017. 
  20. ↑ Raaschou-Nielsen, O.; Andersen, Z. J.; Hvidberg, M.; Jensen, S. S.; Ketzel, M.; Sorensen, M.; Tjonneland, A. (2011). "Lung cancer incidence and long-term exposure to air pollution from traffic. [Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't].". Environmental Health Perspectives. 119 (6): 860–65. PMC 3114823Freely accessible. PMID 21227886. doi:10.1289/ehp.1002353. 
  21. ↑ Raaschou-Nielsen, O.; Andersen, Z. J.; Hvidberg, M.; Jensen, S. S.; Ketzel, M.; Sorensen, M.; Tjonneland, A. (2011). "Air pollution from traffic and cancer incidence: a Danish cohort study". Environmental Health. 10: 67. PMC 3157417Freely accessible. PMID 21771295. doi:10.1186/1476-069X-10-67. 
  22. ↑ Yong, C (2013). "Sources of plastic marine debris on beaches of Korea: More from the ocean than the land". Ocean Science Journal. 49 (2): 151–162. doi:10.1007/s12601-014-0015-8. 
  23. ↑ Mr Chen's claim was made in The Lancet (December 2013 issue) and reported in The Daily Telegraph 8th January 2014 p. 15 'Air pollution killing up to 500,000 Chinese each year, admits former health minister.
  24. ↑ "WHO | Diarrhoeal disease". World Health Organization. 2013. Retrieved 26 April 2019. 
  25. ↑ "5 Trillion Pieces of Ocean Trash Found, But Fewer Particles Than Expected". 13 December 2014. Archived from the original on 5 February 2015. Retrieved 25 January 2015. 
  26. ↑ Third IMO GHG Study 2014 (PDF), International Maritime Organization 
  27. ↑ Second IMO GHG Study 2014 (PDF), International Maritime Organization, archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-10-19 
  28. ↑ Allen, Joshua L.; Liu, Xiufang; Pelkowski, Sean; Palmer, Brian; Conrad, Katherine; Oberdörster, Günter; Weston, Douglas; Mayer-Pröschel, Margot; Cory-Slechta, Deborah A. (2014-06-05). "Early Postnatal Exposure to Ultrafine Particulate Matter Air Pollution: Persistent Ventriculomegaly, Neurochemical Disruption, and Glial Activation Preferentially in Male Mice". Environmental Health Perspectives. 122 (9): 939–945. ISSN 0091-6765. PMC 4154219Freely accessible. PMID 24901756. doi:10.1289/ehp.1307984. 
  29. ↑ McEnaney, Michael (7 June 2014). "Air pollution link discovered to autism, schizophrenia risks". Retrieved 8 June 2014. 
  30. ↑ "New Evidence Links Air Pollution to Autism, Schizophrenia". University of Rochester Medical Center. 6 June 2014. Retrieved 8 June 2014. 
  31. ↑ "7 million premature deaths annually linked to air pollution". WHO. 25 March 2014. Retrieved 27 April 2019. 
  32. ↑ Gallagher, James (17 December 2015). "Cancer is not just 'bad luck' but down to environment, study suggests". BBC. Retrieved 27 April 2019. 
  33. ↑ Stanglin, Doug (October 20, 2017). "Global pollution is the world's biggest killer and a threat to survival of mankind, study finds". USA Today. Retrieved April 26, 2019. 
  34. ↑ Sutter, John D. (12 December 2016). "How to stop the sixth mass extinction". CNN. Retrieved 29 April 2019. 
Retrieved from "http://timelines.issarice.com/index.php?title=Timeline_of_pollution&oldid=29468"