Understanding air pollution of the past may be key to explaining some of the health inequalities that persist between different parts of the UK. Paintings by Lowry, Constable, Monet and Turner show how our skies were often filled with haze and smoke, but we have few measurements to understand how much pollution was in the air and what it was made of.
Dr Ann Power, of the University of Exeter, has been looking for evidence of past air pollution in the mud of urban and agricultural ponds. “We wanted to understand how exposure to urban air pollution has changed over the last 200 years as our towns and cities have evolved since the Industrial Revolution. We focused on the Merseyside region due to its industrial past and present-day high rates of long-term illness,” she said.
