Causes and Solutions To Urban Pollution Of The United States

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to grow as more jobs became available in urban centers, and the industrial revolution created large-scale factories in many cities. City streets were unpaved, leading to dust and debris on every street. The streets were congested with people, animals, and horse-drawn vehicles, adding to the pollution.
Congestion and pollution on nineteenth-century city streets were all the more intolerable as the commercial and industrial sectors became the worst afflicted. Of the 8,000 kilometers of streets in eleven large American cities in 1880, 50.8 percent were unpaved; in the same cities, of 11,084 kilometers a decade later, 62.7 percent were unpaved; of 20,495 kilometers in 1902, 48.3 percent were unpaved (Konvitz 126).
In addition, railroads belching out thick black smoke from their steam engines added to air pollution in the cites and countryside, as did the smoke from factories and thousands of fireplaces and stoves used for heating homes and businesses. Upton Sinclair wrote of ...

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and dirt streets were paved. Wastewater treatment became more common, and the dangers of dumping raw sewage and chemicals became more understood and discouraged. However, other forms of pollution took their places. Probably one of the largest polluters in our cities today is the automobile. In many cities, such as Los Angeles, there are few options for public transportation, and the roadways are clogged with commuters from morning to night. California has one of the strictest laws on emission control in the nation, but the sheer volume of autos on the road continues to fill the skies of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego with noxious fumes and smog on most days of the ...

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