Now here's something you REALLY don't see often. A modern scientific paper citing one from 1775.

[NNadir]

...or maybe you can if you look.

Recently I posted about a modern paper citing a paper from 1904. (My title was wrong, it was 1904, not 1905) It is here:

Here's something you don't see often, a 1905 chemistry paper cited 214 times in modern literature.

I was reading this paper this morning: Defining the Scope of Exposome Studies and Research Needs from a Multidisciplinary Perspective (Pei Zhang, Christopher Carlsten, Romanas Chaleckis, Kati Hanhineva, Mengna Huang, Tomohiko Isobe, Ville M. Koistinen, Isabel Meister, Stefano Papazian, Kalliroi Sdougkou, Hongyu Xie, Jonathan W. Martin, Stephen M. Rappaport, Hiroshi Tsugawa, Douglas I. Walker, Tracey J. Woodruff, Robert O. Wright, and Craig E. Wheelock Environmental Science & Technology Letters 2021 8 (10), 839-852)

It contains the following text:

As early as the 18th century, it was demonstrated that environmental exposures increase risks of chronic human disease. (1) Public awareness for this idea grew in the 1950s when causal links were reported between smoking and lung cancer. (2) Soon afterward, Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” raised concerns about the adverse health consequences of synthetic organic chemical exposures, (3) thus motivating establishment of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and many new funding avenues for research into the occurrence and health consequences of environmental contaminant exposures. The Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T) journal has communicated such research to an international audience since 1969... (4)

Reference 1 is this one:

Pott, P. Chirurgical Observations Relative to the Cataract, The Polypus of the Nose, The Cancer of the Scrotum, The Differenent Kinds of Ruptures, and The Mortification of the Toes and Feet; T. J. Carnegy, for L. Hawes, W. Clarke, and R. Collins: London, 1775

The Google Scholar link provided by the ACS in the text indicates this 18th century paper has been cited 619 times.

[Karadeniz]

1. I wonder what the environmental exposure in the 18th century was and their chronic disease...

[NNadir]

2. Unfortunately the text is not available on line, but it seems to have been chimney sweeps.

The Google Scholar entry makes reference to citations but does not provide the text.

However, here is a citing document: Chimney Sweeps’ Cancer in the 18th Century or the 21st Century Covid-19 Pandemic: How Hand-washing Has Been, Is, and Will Be the Simplest Epidemiological Intervention.

Combustion residues, both aerosol, solid and semisolid are known carcinogens, probably because of the planarity polyaromatic hydrocarbons which are prevalent components. To the extent they are oxidized into ketonic structures, when trapped in the minor groove of DNA, they can form adducts. These have been characterized by modern analytical high resolution mass spec, for example, and high field NMR.

An nice relatively modern review article discusses the mechanisms of pathology connected with soot: Christoph F.A. Vogel, Laura S. Van Winkle, Charlotte Esser, Thomas Haarmann-Stemmann, The aryl hydrocarbon receptor as a target of environmental stressors – Implications for pollution mediated stress and inflammatory responses, Redox Biology, Volume 34, 2020, 101530.

Although coal mining had already begun in the 18th century, it really did not become a mainstream undertaking until the effective availability of steam engines to pump water out of mines, which took place in the early 19th century.