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Science Quickly

Preindustrial Pollution Pestered Peru

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.31.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2015

⏱️ 1 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ice cores show a sudden rise in heavy metal air pollution in South America 240 years before the industrial revolution, probably due to metallurgy and mining. Karen Hopkin reports

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is scientific Americans 60 second science. I'm Karen Hoffman. This will just take a minute.

0:07.5

When you think about air pollution, you may picture smoke stacks belching out noxious black clouds or the gas-guzzling

0:14.9

SUVs crowding the highways, but different cultures found different ways to foul the

0:20.0

atmosphere long before the Industrial Revolution. The latest example of

0:24.2

pre-industrial pollution comes from Peru almost half a millennium ago. To get a

0:29.2

read on what humans have been ejecting into the air, researchers pulled ice cores from

0:33.7

Calchaya, a glacier high in the Andes. The samples provide an annual archive of

0:38.8

elements that have been circulating in the atmosphere stretching back to the year 793.

0:44.8

Analyzing the core, the researchers found that prior to about 1532, the ice harbored

0:49.6

only a sprinkling of dust and ash, remnants of the occasional volcanic eruption.

0:54.0

But at about the 1540 mark, corresponding with the start of colonial mining and metallurgy,

0:59.0

the cores suddenly contain chromium, molybdenum, antimony, and lead.

1:04.2

The finding is in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

1:08.0

Of course, these waste products are a proverbial drop in the bucket compared to the toxins

1:12.1

we put out today today because we've developed

1:14.5

ways to pollute that people back then could only have dreamed of.

1:17.8

Thanks for the minute. For Scientific Americans 60 Second Science I'm

1:21.8

Karen Hopkins.

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