People in an era in which global crisis is permanently, threateningly present. Despite that fact little work has yet been completed within the mainstream of social, economic and urban history on the origins, distribution and impact of environmental pollution in the 'first industrial nation'. This chapter outlines the social and processes and traditions that partially defined urban-based pollution. It presents an overview of the production, treatment and disposal of human and manufacturing waste, and the contamination of river and domestic drinking water. The chapter explains the construction of a provisional narrative of the beginnings of a 'refuse revolution'. Goaded on by the lash of moralised sanitary ideology, the sewering and cleansing of towns and cities that had started during the 1840s would in time stabilise and then dramatically transform the urban environment during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries The chapter concludes by presenting an assessment based on the impact of atmospheric pollution and general chronological issues.