29 January 2022 | New Scientist | 5The leader
IN 1855, Michael Faraday wrote a letter to
the UK parliament alerting MPs to the
state of the river Thames, which was used
both as a sewer and a source of drinking
water. He had conducted an experiment
in which he sank pieces of paper to see at
what point they disappeared from view
in the turbid water. Barely any depth at all,
he found, concluding that the river had
become a cesspool. “If we neglect this
subject, we cannot expect to do so with
impunity,” he warned.
Parliament neglected the matter, and
was punished. In 1858, the Great Stink
enveloped London, necessitating vast
expenditure to quell the stench. The
curtains in the Houses of Parliament
were soaked in bleach in a bid to keep the
miasma out. It failed, and the members
could no longer ignore the problem.Last week, scientists issued a similar,
although sterner, warning. Chemical
pollution is now so pervasive that we
have smashed through a guard rail called
a “planetary boundary ” (see page 28).
It is now a risk to the habitability of Earth.
Our habit of treating the environment as
a sewer has come back to haunt us again.But just as in the mid-19th century,
we don’t fully understand what impact
the pollution is having on our health.
Faraday’s contemporaries were aware
of a link between filthy water and disease,
but didn’t know that microorganisms,
not foul air, were the cause.We similarly understand that chemical
pollution is probably bad for us, but we
don’t really know how. That is the subject
of an ambitious new field of science called
exposomics, which aims to measure
our exposure to chemical pollutants
throughout our lives and decipher their
effects on our health, whether these are
good, bad or indifferent (see page 44). From
what we know already, the answer will
mostly be “bad”. The pollution problem
is probably even worse than we realise.
Cleaning up the Thames required a
vast sewage system, which took years
and fortunes to build. The scale of the
waste problem we face today is orders
of magnitude greater. Our political
leaders may wish to hold their noses,
but they, too, will soon find out that
there is nowhere to hide. ❚Dying of exposure
We can’t afford any more delays in getting to grips with chemical pollution
“ We understand that chemical
pollution is probably bad for us,
but we don’t really know how”Chief executive Nina Wright
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