Academic/General Training Module by Adam Smith First Published in 2015

 
D 
Urbanites had to seek locations to dispose of the wastes they produced. Initially, they 
placed wastes on sites within the city, polluting the air, land, and water with industrial 
and domestic effluents. As cities grew larger, they disposed of their wastes by 
transporting them to more distant locations. Thus, cities constructed sewerage 

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systems for domestic wastes. They usually discharged the sewage into neighbouring 
waterways, often polluting the water supply of downstream cities. 
The air and the land also became dumps for waste disposal. In the late nineteenth 
century, coal became the preferred fuel for industrial, transportation, and domestic 
use. But while providing an inexpensive and plentiful energy supply, coal was also very 
dirty. The cities that used it suffered from air contamination and reduced sunlight, 
while the cleaning tasks of householders were greatly increased. 
E 
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, reformers began demanding 
urban environmental cleanups and public health improvements. Women's groups 
often took the lead in agitating for clean air and clean water, showing a greater 
concern than men in regard to quality of life and health-related issues. The 
replacement of the horse, first by electric trolleys and then by the car, brought about 
substantial improvements in street and air sanitation. The movements demanding 
clean air, however, and reduction of waterway pollution were largely unsuccessful. On 
balance, urban sanitary conditions were probably somewhat better in the 1920s than 
in the late nineteenth century, but the cost of improvement often was the exploitation 
of urban hinterlands for water supplies, increased downstream water pollution, and 
growing automobile congestion and pollution.