Industrial Revolution and Its Impact

Industrial Revolution and Its

Impact On The Natural Environment

Beginning around the early years of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution transformed virtually every aspect of human life through the introduction of new and innovative methods of manufacturing based on technologies which did not exist prior to the 19th century. This great economic and social revolution began quietly in Great Britain but within a few short years, it had "spread throughout the rest of the world and opened an era of mass production, mass consumption and mass disposal." As a result of this massive expansion, human beings took on new roles as industrial leaders, corporate-based manufacturers and mass consumers, not to mention "the damage caused by society to the natural environment" which increased dramatically as compared to a hundred years earlier when technology was in its infancy ("Pursuing the Ideal Society," 2007, Internet).

Three specific natural environments were hardest hit by the Industrial Revolution, namely, water, air and the climate. With water and air, pollution arose from the burning of coal and other fossil fuels used in "the production of metals and basic chemicals," such as iron, steel and machinery solvents, and since there was no suitable way to dispose of the waste which resulted from burning fossil fuels, "water-borne diseases like cholera and typhoid" and air pollutants like coal smoke became much more prevalent and over time began to affect "working families housed close to the industrial sources," such as living near a factory which belched out black smoke and polluted the air and many drinking water sources, both underground and aboveground. In the cities, the situation was even worse, for after 1830, "two great groups of 19th century urban killers -- air pollution and water pollution," negatively affected the natural environment and with the increasing construction of factories and manufacturing centers in the cities, "the mass migration of populations from the countryside to the fast-growing towns" began which also affected air and water quality to the extreme ("The Industrial Revolution," 2007, Internet).

As to the climate, as a result of huge factory smokestacks belching out black smoke from the burning of coal, the atmosphere slowly began to change and severely affected rainfall patterns and created variations in the temperature of the air. This was the beginning of what we now call acid rain, a combination of water and carbon dioxide which slowly pollutes everything it comes in contact with, such as aboveground water sources (lakes, rivers and wells) and even the land itself in the form of run-off which eventually ends up in agricultural areas where food is grown and harvested.