Colonial Pollution Found Today | God's World News

Colonial Pollution Found Today

05/01/2015
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    An engraving depicts a colonial era Spanish silver mine in South America.

Is air pollution just a product of today’s cars, planes, and factories? Would it surprise you to find out that scientists discovered evidence of air pollution from colonial times?

Long before fuel-powered machines existed, it seems there was still air pollution. Traces of that pollution are locked up inside an ice cap in the Andes Mountains. It’s been there for about 400 years.

This air pollution is man-made, but it didn’t come from fuel-burning machinery. It’s the result of Spanish silver mining that took place in Bolivia back in colonial days.

The Spanish colonists used a method of extracting silver that involved lead and mercury—two toxic elements. During processing, those chemicals rose in a cloud of dust into the air. Colonial governor, Francisco de Toledo, knew that the toxins could harm people. He ordered that the mining operations build taller and taller chimneys. This would carry the pollution up and away from workers. The metal-rich smog floated about 500 miles across the South American continent. Some got trapped inside ice atop a mountain in southern Peru.

The discovery is the first evidence of human-caused air pollution in South America before the Industrial Revolution.

After creating the world, God gave much of its care and use over to people, beginning with Adam and Eve. He desired that we manage, use, develop, and continue to create with it. But that creative freedom comes with great responsibility. Mankind keeps moving God’s creation forward in remarkable ways. But our actions have had negative impacts too. Pollution is one of those.

We can be thankful that God knows about both the good and bad that we will produce. He made the Earth able to absorb a great deal of pollution and to renew itself with processes such as those that rain, bacteria, and plant life contribute. But humans also must think ahead, evaluating the impact our actions today might have on the world in the future.

The ice cap’s contents remind us of that. But the discovery also reminds us that even then, God was working, trapping some of that pollution where it could do no harm.