TRADES WASTE. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. * THE question of rivers pollution is now so prominently before all Local Governing bodies and manufacturing interests, and the general drift of opinion and legislation in Great Britain seems so likely to ensure the prominence of this subject for some time to come, that at the request of the Publishers of this volume I consented to expand into this form a contribution I made to the Proceedings of the Institute of Civil Engineers on the treatment of Trades Waste. But the fact that the subject is now receiving so much attention at the hands of engineers, chemists, and bacteriologists, must not be attributed to any sudden increase either in the extent or degree of contamination to which rivers have been all along subjected. Neither is it due to the fact that the recently formed County Councils have been over-eager to put their newly acquired powers into operation, or that they have put them into operation at all without due consideration. The latter observation is suggested by a circular posted to the various members of the Paper Makers' Association by its secretary in March 1897, of which the following is the opening paragraph: "Rivers Pollution (Prevention) Act. "It is felt that the present method of administering these Acts is likely to be attended with grave consequences to the Trade and Industry of Lancashire. "The law, as you are aware, is contained in an Act passed in 1876 called 'The Rivers Pollution (Prevention) Act,' which Act was, until the coming into force of the Local Government Act, 1888, administered by the various Local Sanitary Authorities, such as Municipal Corporations and Local Boards, in their separate areas. Since 1890, however, the administration of the law has in Lancashire been entrusted to two Boards or Com* Vol. cxii. mittees called respectively the Mersey and Irwell Joint Committee and the Ribble Joint Committee. The Committees have engaged expensive staffs of officials and inspectors, who have to justify their existence by visits and reports which are, as a rule, made monthly when the Committees meet. The Mersey and Irwell Committee have also succeeded in obtaining a private Act containing some stringent provisions, and affording less protection to Manufacturers than the general Act of 1876, and more than one attempt has been made by the County Councils to procure an alteration in the general law on the lines of the Mersey and Irwell Act. "It is believed that if the result of the working of these two Committees could be ascertained, it would show that they have caused a capital outlay to be made on works within their jurisdiction to an amount considerably exceeding £5,000,000; the interest and sinking fund of which may be calculated with sufficient accuracy for the purpose of this statement at 5 per cent. upon the total, making a dead yearly sum of £250,000; and, in addition to this, the Manufacturers have had to expend on their own account a large capital outlay in respect of their works and factories, besides incurring a heavy annual expenditure for their working and maintenance." The statement that "the law .. was, until the coming into force of the Local Government Act of 1888, administered by the various Local Sanitary Authorities," is not strictly correct; in fact, the cause of much of the burden suddenly put upon manufacturers in 1888 was the failure of the Local Sanitary Authorities to administer the Rivers Pollution (Prevention) Act, which had really been on the Statute Book for a period of twelve years prior to that date. There was just as much reason for the administration of the Act of 1876 before the Local Government Board Act of 1888 as there is to-day. The trouble began about thirty or forty years ago, very soon after the great impetus given to British industry by the development of the steam engine, railways, and ocean-going steamers. When, after the Great Exhibition in 1851, the nation had completed its exultation over the great strides made in Science and Art, and when it had finished comparing the exports, imports, revenue, population, and capital invested in the year 1830 with those of the year 1850, it was observed that increased production meant increase in objectionable waste products, and that the same result occurred from an increase in population. After a considerable number of actions at common law for damages due to pollution suffered by private individuals had been heard, the attention of Parliament was called to the apparent necessity for further legislation on the matter, and a Rivers Pollution Commission was appointed about the year 1867. The reports of these Commissioners, by far the best production on the subject in any language up to the present day, were the result of most careful inquiry, inquiry thoroughly scientific in its character and therefore unprejudiced, and the conclusions are almost reliable even now. Before any conclusions were arrived at, manufacturers were fully and fairly heard, and nothing was suggested in the reports, nor embodied in the Act eventually passed, likely to prejudice the interests of British industries. The Commissioners found the rivers grossly polluted, and they also found that a good deal of this pollution could be prevented and that it ought to be prevented. * Speaking of the Yorkshire rivers in the third report, they say: "These rivers are indeed subject, in common with those flowing through agricultural districts (as the Thames and Lea), to pollution with sewage from tanneries, breweries, malting and other ordinary trades, and from exceptional manufactures, such as paper making, etc.; but beyond all doubt their characteristic peculiarity is that derived from the different processes incidental to the worsted and woollen trade. To those who are familiar with the West Riding of Yorkshire it may seem unnecessary to describe the condition of the rivers which form the subject of this report, and yet it may well be doubted whether that very familiarity may not have rendered them all but unconscious of a state of visible pollution which strikes a stranger from the non-manufacturing districts with astonishment. "Moreover, it is certain that very few persons even in the district possess an intimate knowledge of the causes of this pollution, or can estimate their individual influence on the general result. "With very few exceptions the streams of the West Riding of Yorkshire run with a liquid which has more the appearance of ink than water. "In the higher part of the country, as is shown in another part of this report, the water is of the purest description; but as it arrives at any point where conditions for the establishment of a woollen mill are sufficiently favourable, so does the character of the water commence to deteriorate, becoming fouler and more foul after leaving each successive mill, till, as has been abundantly shown by the evidence, the stream has to be abandoned as a source of water either for domestic supply or for manufacturing purposes (otherwise than furnishing power), and is looked upon and treated as little better than an open drain." There is not the least exaggeration about this description; in fact much more might be said. The condition of these rivers, as well as some of those in Lancashire, falls in with a word painting of a polluted stream which occurs in an article by Adolph Gasch, Vienna, and which I venture to reproduce : "Yonder, for instance, we see a fell-monger wash in time-honoured fashion his skins, recently treated by caustic lime, in holes in the ground through which passes the water of a public water-course, in order to cleanse them from the lime and hair which may have been burnt off. "Close beside him the paper maker, educated in chemical science, steeps his crude rags in lyes, after which he exposes them for bleaching purposes to the influence of free chlorine, and both the lyes and free chlorine find their way in the waste waters to the river. "At another spot close by the water is milky in appearance, due to the very fine particles of wood and resin unretained by the finest copper gauze of the sieves in the saw-mill, and which particles also now are hurried along in the waste water to the stream. "The manufacturer of cellulose, a dangerous rival to the owner of the last establishment, is desirous of bringing out the woody fibre in longer threads by chemical means. He removes the resin which binds the fibres together by strong potash lyes, and afterwards washes out both resin and lyes into the stream, without troubling himself with the consequences which may result. "From the opposite bank there flows a black stream, the refuse water from a colliery which washes the coal before its submission to red heat, from its finely powdered carboniferous as well as from its argillaceous attachments. "At another spot, where the water is still pure before it reaches him, a dyer enjoys the sight of it so beautiful and clear, and the next moment pollutes it with the most varied colours by the final washings of his coloured cloths or wools, thereby annoying all the manufacturers situated down the river, for they advance claims to pure water for their work. "Apparently harmlessly, but in reality dangerously, the waste water from chemical wool-washing and carbonizing establishments enters the stream. "This acid water which leaves the carbonizing establishment of course acts injuriously on all vegetable and animal matter so long as it is not neutralised by any base or diluted to harmlessness by immense quantities of water. "Thereto come also from the fulleries clay and soap liquors, from the shoddy factories the dust produced by the tearing up of old cloth and the particles of wool fibre which have fallen off; then from the gas works the spent ammoniacal liquors and even the tar water; from the flax and hemp steeping, the refuse steep water, etc., etc. "The dye works contribute most largely to the foul pollutions. They empty their becks after the contents are done with into the river, or, as already remarked, wash the fabric from excess colour, and so foul the water of the public stream with all the colours of the rainbow. "It would be difficult here to enumerate every article which is used as a colouring matter. Chemistry in its vigorous youth takes care that every moment a new colouring matter shall be discovered or at least modified. "Only the army of aniline colours can here be mentioned which at one time were wholly poisonous but which, of late, in some factories at least, are said to be entirely harmless. It is certain that these colouring matters are not quite harmless and neutral, for the conception of a dye includes the supposition that it fixes itself in the stuff to be dyed, whether of animal or vegetable origin, even if the stuffs to be coloured must first be mordanted. "After taking up these different substances the erstwhile crystal river becomes finally a mixture of water, particles of wood, earth, dust, fat, soap, coal, wool, hairs, and different chemical ingredients and colours, a blue black, slow-moving fluid." It will be probably agreed by most manufacturers that such a state of things as this ought not to exist. It will probably be agreed that such a condition of things need not exist. There is a medium between reckless insanitary pollution and the shutting down of an industry in a futile attempt to preserve fishing streams. Dr L. Petermann, Director to the State Agricultural Station, Belgium, states :— * "It is, indeed, an exaggeration to demand, as has been done, a system of purification so complete that water, having undergone treatment, shall contain neither ammonia, sulphuric acid, nitrous acid, or any organic matter capable of reducing Fehling's solution; nor any organic ferment, nor 'algæ' or their germs characteristic of impure water (Beggiatoa, Cladothrix). In fact, the committee for the improvement of fisheries have even insisted on the absence of anything injurious to fish in purified effluents on their immediate issue from the factory, and therefore undiluted. In this matter Dr Weigelt remarks that the income of German river fisheries amounts to eight million of francs, whilst the value of products obtained by manufactures which give rise to refuse water, is eight thousand millions. The same condition of affairs must exist in Belgium. Nevertheless, this authority cannot be regarded as prejudiced, since he was one of the principal instigators of the movement which has been set on foot for the protection of fisheries, and was prizeman in the open contest on that question in the Belgian Academy (Monsieur de Selys-Longchamp's Prize). "An appreciable improvement, from an hygienic point of view, a noticeable decrease in the complaints and claims of river proprietors and fishermen, would certainly already have obtained if the measures which are adopted all over the country imposed what I might call 'a relative purification,' by which discharged effluents— 1. Should no longer make the stream slimy or muddy. 2. Should contain neither the remains of beetroot or cosettes. Referring to beet sugar factories. |
