Urban Pollution by Joel a. Tarr Human Dissatisfaction

Joel Tarr's article, "Urban Pollution -- Many Long Years Ago" is largely about the form of urban pollution that preceded that created by automobiles. In short, this pollution was largely caused by horses, which were used as the dominant form of transportation from the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 20th century. The author is essentially establishing a comparison between the pollution caused by horses and that caused by automobiles, although he devotes the vast majority of the article to elaborating on the fact that the pollution caused by horses was considered as big of a problem as the pollution caused by automobiles in the 1970s. If one examines the amount of space he uses for detailing the concerns regarding horse pollution to that of automobile pollution, one can infer that the former appears to be worse than the latter.

To Tarr's credit, he presents a fairly comprehensive overview of the problem that the widespread uses of horses caused in terms of polluting urban environments. A good deal of the article is focused on the literal pollution these horses caused by their daily excrements. In some of the more colorful passages the author...

Additionally, he parallels the rise of street sweeping within urban environments as being a key necessity for the employment of so many horses, and discusses the inadequacies of many of these early attempts. The pollution of horses was not merely limited to bad sights and smells, however. The collection of their manure in most parts of the street were also linked with diseases -- which is a key parallel between urban pollution of yesterday and automobile pollution of the 1970's and of today. Some of the most horrific diseases of the time were linked to the filth of horse manure as the subsequent quotation shows. In some instances, these diseases were exacerbated by the copious quantities of manure on the streets of previous time periods.
However, it is noteworthy to mention that the essential point the author is attempting to argue actually goes beyond the comparison of horses and cars. He provides as much detail about horses to emphasize the fact that whatever technology or means of production that people use, there will inherently be problems associated with it. In fact, there will more than likely be the same sorts of problems. This fact is indicated by some of the points of similarity that the author makes in the pollution caused by horses and that caused by cars. As previously suggested, both forms of pollution are linked to poor…