Interest in air pollution among early Fellows of the Royal Society

AIR pollution became a problem in London as early as the thirteenth century, shortly after the introduction of imported coal. The use of coal as a fuel in kilns in London and Southwark annoyed the public so much that a Royal Commission investigated the matter in 1284 (1). It recurred no doubt throughout the intervening centuries, but there appears to be little serious discussion of it as anything more than a transient local occurrence until the seventeenth century when a number of eminent men, such as Digby, Evelyn, Graunt and Petty, gave the matter their attention. The intense intellectual activity of the period and the formation of scientific societies catalysed many of the scientific developments of the period. But it was more likely that the interest in air pollution was engendered by the sharp deterioration in the quality of London’s air throughout the first half of the seventeenth century (2).