[HN Gopher] London's Great Stink
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London's Great Stink
Author : EndXA
Score : 51 points
Date : 2024-03-05 17:03 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historic-uk.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historic-uk.com)
| deepnet wrote:
| Bragg & Guests discuss the Great Stink - In Our Time.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001gjcm
| disadvantage wrote:
| > 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.
| boringg wrote:
| How would the cars (And heavy duty vehicles) being all
| electric/hydrogen not solve the smog problem?
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| Electric cars only get rid of tailpipe emissions. Cars still
| leave other contaminants via their tyres, for instance
| mikestew wrote:
| What do those "other contaminants" that aren't tailpipe
| emissions have to do with smog?
| ggm wrote:
| At 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)
| wigster wrote:
| a 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 wrote:
| The laws of the conservation of shit are immutable and
| unavoidable. You can displace it in spacetime but eventually
| it comes back.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| We 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 wrote:
| Thing 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...
| deciplex wrote:
| A 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 wrote:
| Well, 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.
| bagels wrote:
| It can, obesity increases mortality.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Also, eating 8ish red cherry pits (chewed/crushed, not just
| swallowed) leads to cyanide toxicity in an average weight
| human adult.
|
| Or just 4 if they happen to be Morello cherries.
| ta8645 wrote:
| Kagi search results say it might have even been three:
|
| https://rickdunhamblog.com/2014/04/02/toxic-white-house-wate...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| On Harrison's death:
| <https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/59/7/990/2895539>
| scrlk wrote:
| > "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-w...
| kristianp wrote:
| Wow, I always assumed it was pumped far out to sea. Is it
| treated first?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Not 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
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| I'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.
| Avicebron wrote:
| I 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
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(page generated 2024-03-05 23:00 UTC)