In the Alps, traces of air pollution go back ... to the Roman Empire

Air pollution was already topical during the Roman Empire.

Long before our industrial era, they had a very intense mining activity to extract silver-bearing lead and to manufacture, among other things, water pipes and coins.

There was talk at that time about a significant pollution which flew into the atmosphere and which, washed away by the rain, found itself stuck in the ice of the Alps.

It is only recently that scientists, by perforating glaciers, have been able to trace the origins of polluting particles dating back more than 2,000 years.

From a time when prosperity was synonymous with poor air quality.

Strangely, the small airborne polluting particles would have had a cooling effect on the climate at that time.

Climate change leading to poor harvests and diseases

Scientists have in fact been able to model the climate change that took place at the height of the Roman Empire and the centuries that followed.

Alpine ice shows us that the atmosphere was loaded with toxic particles.

The air of the big cities which the Romans breathed was particularly bad.

These polluting particles would have had the effect of clouding the sky, thus limiting the arrival of the sun's rays on Earth.

Which caused a drop in temperatures.

This cooling caused at the time its share of bad harvests and the spread of diseases closely linked to poor air quality.

It is likely that these events, along with other factors, precipitated the fall of the empire. 

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Several lessons can be learned from this ancient pollution.

First, on the idea that large-scale, human-induced pollution or climate change are modern issues.

The second is that the prosperity that we gauge today through growth and points of GDP must be decoupled from the destruction of our habitat.

It is only when the creation of wealth will no longer ruin the planet that our societies can truly prosper and last.