In the 1760s, British business owners swung open the doors to a cutting-edge innovation: factories. But behind those harbingers of industrialization lay coal, the fuel for their furnaces, pumps and engines.
As revamped manufacturing practices spread around Europe through the 19th century, the polluting byproducts of coal-powered engines spread even farther — possibly to the peaks of the tallest mountain range on Earth.
Samples from the Himalayan glacier Dasuopu dating back to the Industrial Revolution contain unusually high levels of metals like iron, lead and uranium. A team of researchers analyzing the ice sample think the presence of these metals indicates that coal-burning byproducts of the Industrial Revolution — the epicenter of which lay about 6,400 miles from Dasuopu — spread all the way to this frigid location almost 24,000 feet above sea level.
The finding, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, adds to our understanding ...
