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Medical Experts and Agnotology in the Fumes Controversy of the Huelva Copper Mines (1888–1890)
Abstract
Huelva’s copper mines (Spain) have been active for centuries but in the second half of the nineteenth century extractive activities in Riotinto, Tharsis, and other mines in the region were intensified in order to reach world leadership. The method used in these mines for copper extraction from low grade ores generated continuous emissions of fumes that were extremely controversial. The inhabitants had complained about the fumes for decades but as activity intensified so did complaints. The killing of anti-fumes demonstrators in 1888 led to the passing of a Royal Decree banning the open-air roasting of ore and to the drafting of numerous reports on the hazards of the fumes. Major state and provincial medical institutions, as well as renowned hygienists and engineers, took part in the assessment, contributing to a scientific controversy especially rich in content. In my paper I will analyse the production and circulation of knowledge and ignorance about the impact of fumes on public health, as well as the role of medical experts and expertise in the controversy. The analysis will focus on the reports drafted between the 1888 ban and its 1890 repeal, and will show the changing nature of the expert assessment and the numerous paths followed by experts in producing ignorance. The paper will conclude by considering other stakeholders, who may shed some light on the reasons behind the performance of the medical experts.
... Dos relevantes controversias científico-técnicas (sobre la influencia de los humos en la vegetación y sobre los medios tecnológicos para abatir los humos) van a caracterizar estos pleitos hasta la Guerra Civil. En cambio, la polémica sobre la salud fue definitivamente cerrada con un informe redactado por la Academia de Medicina después del Año de los Tiros que certificaba que los humos eran inocuos Guillem-Llombat, 2017). En lo sucesivo, las cuestiones de salud en las cuencas se restringían al terreno laboral («Los humos tóxicos de Peñarroya… 1922»). ...
... The conclusions of the report of the RAM were unanimously accepted, marking the end of a long and fruitful scientific controversy in the basin. After that, health problems were limited to the field of occupational diseases [34,50]. ...
Mining activities cause serious pollution problems that affect health and the environment. This paper focuses on the environmental and biological effects that mining activity had on the population living and working in the Riotinto-Nerva area in the last third of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, when this area accounted for approximately 10% of world copper production. To do so, we explore the social, technological, and scientific responses to environmental pollution caused by mining extraction in this area during industrialisation. Second, we analyse welfare indicators, such as the heights of conscripts and mortality rates, so as to examine the social effects of the mining activity. Third, municipal health and education expenditures are examined to study the intervention made by the local authorities to address the welfare problems caused by the mining work and environment. Finally, we examine whether the health policy had positive effects on the health of the population after the negative external effects of copper mining in this area had been mitigated. The findings show that the negative impacts of copper exploitation on the environment and welfare could only be diminished using health policies to combat this kind of urban penalty.
En 1884, comenzó una controversia en Linares (Jaén) sobre una nueva fundición de plomo que se pretendía construir junto al casco urbano, despertando quejas y temores de algunos vecinos por los posibles efectos de sus humos. El distrito plomífero de Linares era uno de los más dinámicos de España y, al duro trabajo y la siniestralidad en las minas y las fundiciones de plomo, se sumaban los efectos de la contaminación, tanto ambientales como en la salud. Este trabajo se centra en la minería del plomo en Linares, entre las décadas de 1880 y 1920, para analizar el impacto de las fundiciones de plomo, los debates sobre las cámaras de condensación y los efectos de los humos en la salud de obreros y vecinos. Se considera el papel de instituciones, como el ayuntamiento, de la prensa y de diferentes expertos, como ingenieros de minas o médicos, en la controversia. Al igual que sucedió en otros países, las grandes empresas mineras utilizaron la agnotología como una estrategia para ocultar y relativizar los riesgos asociados al plomo.
Estudo a retratar o processo de Urbanização e segregação no litoral turístico
Objetivo/Contexto:
Los conflictos sociales provocados por la contaminación atmosférica dan lugar a un intenso debate sobre la salud en las cuencas de minerales no ferrosos europeas y norteamericanas durante el siglo XIX. Los especialistas contemporáneos los consideraban un problema de salud pública porque afectaban a toda la comunidad minera, pues englobaban lo que hoy denominamos riesgos ambientales y profesionales. Este artículo analiza la regulación institucional y las soluciones científicas y técnicas aplicadas a partir de un estudio de casos seleccionados. Sin embargo, en la primera mitad del siglo XX los problemas de salud asociados a los humos mineros evolucionan hasta convertirse en una cuestión de higiene industrial circunscrita, por ello, al ámbito laboral. En esa evolución tiene mucho que ver el papel que desempeñan los distintos actores en juego, particularmente las grandes corporaciones.
Metodología:
Esta investigación de carácter comparativo en el tiempo y en el espacio se aborda tanto a partir de un análisis de bibliografía actual como de fuentes contemporáneas.
Originalidad:
La contaminación atmosférica en la mina desencadenó un proceso de innovaciones institucionales, científicas y técnicas estrechamente relacionadas entre sí. El debate suscitado se internacionalizó, pues se extendió desde finales del siglo XIX desde las grandes cuencas europeas hasta las americanas.
Conclusiones:
La controversia sobre los humos dividió profundamente las cuencas de minerales no ferrosos de Europa, Estados Unidos y Canadá, y la ciencia sirvió de apoyo a las medidas institucionales y técnicas implementadas. En ese proceso, las empresas mineras tuvieron la capacidad de adaptar con éxito la ciencia a sus necesidades, en especial desde finales del siglo XIX.
We argue that industrial hazards have remained an integral feature of the
international and ‘global’ economy since the early modern period, and invite historians of
science into the study of their history. The growth and dissemination of knowledge about these
hazards, as well as the production and trade that generate them, continue to generate deep
inequalities in just who is exposed to them, as illustrated by the shifting impact of the asbestosrelated
disease plague in the past half-century. Exposure levels in poorer countries have risen as
those in affluent societies have fallen, the latter due as much to popular protest and media
exposure as to scientific expertise.We suggest that the best way to understand the formation of
knowledge about these hazards is not to return to the epistemological battlegrounds of the
‘science wars’ of the 1990s but to seek more interdisciplinary integration of the multifaceted
ways that material bodies, environments and interests contribute to an understanding of such
hazards and injuries. We propose the framework of ‘industrial-hazard regimes’ as an avenue
into the ways in which knowledge about risks and dangers at work are created, translated and
contested in different countries and times. While urging a return, in some respects, to the early
models of ‘progressive enlightenment’ devised by radical commentators and pioneering
historians of the industrial hazard in the early twentieth century, we would revise these early
approaches, and also offer some sceptical commentary on the difficulties raised, more recently,
by narratives of ‘heroic populism’ or ‘anti-science epidemiology’. The critical standpoints for
which we argue recognize the diverse social and political identities and loyalties not only of past
contributors to the controversies on industrial hazard, but also of historians of science and
medicine themselves.
What does it mean to be an expert? In Rethinking Expertise, Harry Collins and Robert Evans offer a radical new perspective on the role of expertise in the practice of science and the public evaluation of technology. Collins and Evans present a Periodic Table of Expertises based on the idea of tacit knowledgeâknowledge that we have but cannot explain. They then look at how some expertises are used to judge others, how laypeople judge between experts, and how credentials are used to evaluate them. Throughout, Collins and Evans ask an important question: how can the public make use of science and technology before there is consensus in the scientific community? This book has wide implications for public policy and for those who seek to understand science and benefit from it. âStarts to lay the groundwork for solving a critical problemâhow to restore the force of technical scientific information in public controversies, without importing disguised political agendas.ââNature âA rich and detailed âperiodic tableâ of expertise . . . full of case studies, anecdotes and intriguing experiments.ââTimes Higher Education Supplement (UK)
Robert Angus Smith (1817-1884) was a Scottish chemist and a leading investigator into what came to be known as 'acid rain'. This study of his working life, contextualized through discussion of his childhood, education, beliefs, family, interests and influences sheds light on the evolving understanding of sanitary science during the nineteenth century. Born in Glasgow and initially trained for a career in the Church of Scotland, Smith instead went on to study chemistry in Germany under Justus von Liebig. On his return to Manchester in the 1840s, Smith's strong Calvinist faith lead him to develop a strong concern for the insanitary environmental conditions in Manchester and other industrial towns in Britain. His appointment as Inspector of the Alkali Administration in 1863 enabled him to marry his social concerns and his work as an analytical chemist, and this book explores his role as Inspector of the Administration from its inception through battles with chemical manufacturers in the courts, to the struggle to widen and tighten the regulatory framework as other harmful chemical nuisances became known. This study of Smith's life and work provides an important background to the way that 'chemical' came to have such negative connotations in the century before publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. It also offers a fascinating insight into the changing landscape of British politics as regulation and enforcement of the chemical industries came to be seen as necessary, and is essential reading for historians of science, technology and industry in the nineteenth century, as well as environmental historians seeking background context to the twentieth-century environmental movements.
1. ANTECEDENTES: Desde la venta de las minas de Riotinto a los ingleses en 1873 1 que fue un ca-pítulo rezagado de la desamortización, se utilizó como procedimiento para ob-tener el cobre el denominado de "cementación artificial" o de "teleras ", tam-bien conocido como calcinación de minerales al aire libre. Consistía este método -ya empleado durante el periodo de propiedad española de las minas y arren-damiento de los años de Remisa-en colocar toneladas de mineral en grandes montones (las teleras) al aire libre, sobre ramajes secos a los que se prendía fuego y que, tras desprender el azufre por combustión y posteriores lavados de aguas agrias de la mina, daba lugar a la precipitación del cobre puro. El desprendimiento de gases sulfurosos que resultaba de esta operación lle-gó a ser de magnitudes impensables, lanzando al aire las teleras (que debían ar-der ininterrumpidamente de 6 a 12 meses al año) hasta 500 Tm. de gases tóxicos diariamente. Además de las molestias que ocasionaban a los obreros y habitantes de Rio-tinto, Nerva y otras aldeas cercanas, estos humos negros que se condensaban en una nube inmensa, pronto denominada popularmente "la manta", les origina-ban perjuicios incluso salariales, pues los dias de "manta" no se podía trabajar durante la mitad o el tercio del horario laboral y esta pérdida se descontaba a los obreros. A esto se añadían las continuas protestas de los pueblos cercanos (hasta 20 pueblos llegaron a verse afectados por los humos) 2, por los efectos al-tamente perniciosos que los humos causaban en su agricultura. Téngase en cuenta que fuese aceptable, caso de Zalamea, o precaria, caso de los demás pue-blos, la agricultura era la única fuente de riqueza de esta zona. Se planteaba co-mo una lucha irreconciliable entre agricultura e industria y minería, llegando a formar los agricultores y sus partidarios la llamada "Liga Antihumista ", que lu-chó denodadamente contra lo que consideraban abusos de los procedimientos mineros. FLORES CABALLERO, M. (1981): La venta de las Minas de Riotinto. Instituto de Estudios Onubenses. Huelva.
In 1902 a copper smelter was in operation near Anaconda, Montana. At the time of this study, it discharged an average of 59,270 pounds of arsenic trioxide, alone with notable quantities of copper, antimony, lead, zinc, and other substances daily. This paper deals with the distribution of certain of the more notable constituents of the smoke, particularly arsenic, over the district in the vicinity of the smelter, and problems associated with the arsenic deposited on the surrounding vegetation. These problems included the poisoning of cattle, the contamination of crops, and the eye and mouth irritation suffered by local farmers. The study concluded that the Anaconda smelter was the source of the arsenic contamination and that the only way to reduce the quantity was to use less highly concentrated arsenic ore. 9 references.
The development of industrial towns on the south-western side of the south Wales coalfield, such as Llanelli, Swansea, Neath and Port Talbot, was based to a large extent upon the growth of metal industries. This paper focuses on a major environmental problem associated with this development: that of 'copper smoke' produced by the region's important copper smelting industry. The first part of the paper discusses the social, economic and legal history of the copper smoke problem, and the technology employed to control emissions. The second part deals with the chemical composition of copper smoke and estimates the output and dispersion of copper smoke and other metal fumes from the Llanelli Copper Co.'s works in the 1860s using a Gaussian plume model. It is argued that the extent of long and short range deposition of sulphur and heavy metals from these works was significantly high and that the industry was therefore a major polluter, particularly when copper smelting was at its peak in the region in the mid- to late- nineteenth century.
Oral history materials from the South Wales Miners' Library are used to examine the communal understandings of, collective responses to, the scourge of Miners' Lung (pneumoconiosis) in the 1920s and 1930s. Lay epidemiology in mining communities attributed an aetiological role to coaldust at a time when many experts believed miners' pulmonary disease to be bronchitic, or to be silica-induced. In their efforts to secure compensation claims for their members, union officials instrumentally used scientific expertise in a variety of forms: they contributed to epidemiological evidence; they lobbied for more government-funded research; they 'bought' experts; they duped expert witnesses; and they made sophisticated instrumental appeals to the supposed independence of favorable expert judgements. Eventually, miners' situated' 'local knowledge' became scientific orthodoxy, a success story which may be associated with the class-conscious miners' 'bump of irreverence' about expert knowledge, and with the divided character of the expert core-set, sections of which were receptive to miners' 'local knowledge' claims.
It is studied the evolution of medical and social attention to aged persons in the historical period, and this task is known under the name of Gerocomia. They are analyzed the historical reasons that make it understandable and the ones which, in the last part of the 19th century, impose its superseding due to the clinical differentiation of the process of aged persons getting ill; in this way, a new chapter is added to the pathology which will be called Geriatrics.
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