Le ciel parisien, témoin de changements techniques et environnementaux – C. Radtka

Dans le cadre du congrès annuel de la SHOT (Society for the History of Technology), Catherine Radtka a présenté la communication “From local surroundings to global phenomena, the Parisian sky as an indicator of technological and environmental change” dans la session “Perceiving Global Skies through Local Airspace: Transatlantic Insights” présidée par Guillaume de Syon (Albright College – Reading, Pennsylvanie, Etats-Unis). La communication s’appuie sur les recherches menées dans le cadre de “Ciels de Paris” depuis les débuts du projet ; elle met en exergue plusieurs « figures » du ciel parisien qui se succèdent ou se superposent au fil du long XXe siècle – le « ciel dépotoir », le « ciel spectacle », le « ciel infrastructure », le « ciel moyen de communication », le « ciel indice d’une pollution globale ». 

In this paper1, I wish to identify different ways of looking at the sky that involved an understanding of the relationship between localized definitions of the sky, and larger, encompassing, even global phenomena and issues. This study is based on the analysis of administrative sources (both at a municipal/departmental and a national level), scientific and technological works (conducted esp. in municipal/prefectoral laboratories) as well as on journalistic accounts. These sources combine two main entry points of the project “Ciels de Paris” – the issue of air quality and aero-mobility. I thus identify different ways of appraising the Parisian sky which became significant at the turn of the 20th century, which I track up to the 1950s.

In 1870, France is at war with Prussia and is rapidly defeated. This episode serves as a starting point for the project because of the new “uses of the sky”2 that emerged during this war when the city was under siege and literally cut off from the rest of the country.

Then the sky was turned into an escape route as well as a means of communication with the outside world. I would like to stress that these new uses and new appraisals of the sky did not involve only flying objects. Turning the sky into a means of communication involved two complementary techniques, balloons and homing pigeons. This complementarity is for instance visible on this painting featuring Gambetta’s escape from Paris:

Jules Didier (1831-1892) et Jacques Guiaud (1811-1876). “Départ de Gambetta pour Tours, sur l’Armand-Barbès, le 7 octobre 1870, à Montmartre”. CCØ  Paris Musées / Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris

It is better seen when we zoom in on the cage that is transported by the balloon.

Such new “uses of the sky” were permitted by previous uses of balloons, the presence of aeronauts in the city, and Parisian industrial infrastructures, but the episode signaled a turning point: aeronautical pursuits and pigeon-fancying acquired a new urgency3. Both domains developed and benefited from an impulse of the State and public authorities. Profiles of aeronauts diversified4.

Scientific explorations of the atmosphere conducted ”in the field” thanks to ballooning had started before the war, but they continued and gained greater legitimacy5.

Other aeronauts defended their ascents for the sake of hygiene6. Thanks to balloons, they were indeed able to escape, at least for some time, the Parisian air which was foggy, full of fumes and bad smells.

Scientific but also sporting ascents linked the Parisian sky with a wider space as on-site explorations contributed to the transnational collection of data in atmospheric science and aeronauts riding free balloons moved away from the city and eventually landed in remote regions. On the other hand, hygienic ascents tended to stress the peculiarity of the Parisian sky, its corruption compared with the ocean of clean air of the global atmosphere.

The search for clean air at higher altitudes echoed largely shared worries about health and sanitary issues7. In a context marked by recurring epidemics and inconvenient bad smells8, the Parisian air was under scrutiny. Its analysis was performed by the Observatory of Montsouris.

This institution became in the mid 1880s a municipal laboratory dedicated to what was described as “climatology” or “meteorology applied to hygiene”. Scientists of the Observatory of Montsouris were mostly chemists and physicians. They undertook systematic analysis of the Parisian air.

Their work was described by municipal commissioners in different reports as “a new study that might have great significance with regard to hygienic issues”9. It provided description of the micro-organisms of the air as well as measurements regarding levels of ozone, carbon dioxide / carbonic acid and ammonia.

Physical and meteorological departmentStudy of thermometric, barometric, magnetic and electric variations; analysis of evolution in air humidity and air mass, winds, atmospheric and telluric streams, sun variation, air evaporating power
Chemical departmentAnalysis of air and of water from precipitation (eaux météoriques)
Analysis of supply water
Micrographic departmentDaily analysis of air in Montsouris and in the centre of Paris
Analysis of water
Work program of the Municipal Observatory of Montsouris for the Year 1887. 
Source : Conseil Municipal de Paris, Rapport présenté par M. Paul Viguier au nom de la commission de surveillance sur l’organisation de l’Observatoire de Montsouris, n° 57, 1887.

A private laboratory called “laboratoire d’études physiques de la tour Saint-Jacques” also became active in 1885 thanks to the municipal generosity10. It was established at the top of the Saint-Jacques tower, a medieval gothic tower, at the very centre of the city, alongside the Rue de Rivoli. This laboratory was founded by a physician and municipal councilman, Dr. Henri Chassaing (1855-1908)11, and young amateurs of science. Its director was Joseph Jaubert (1861-1916); an aeronaut who regularly wrote in newspapers12.

The place was first used to perform physics experiments during a lunar eclipse but it benefited from the municipal subsidies and was equipped with more scientific material. Photographs of the Parisian sky taken from the top of the tower were remarkable13.

The elevated position of this new observatory was compared by some newspapers with balloons’ position:

« A few days ago, in a fog that seemed to bevery intense on the ground, Messrs. Joseph Jaubert and Carré were able to recognize, fromthe top of the tower, that this fog was barely a hundred meters thick and that above it the sky was the purest. Their attention was especiallyattracted by the light emitted by the gas spouts, which was very reddish. This remark was alsomade by the passengers of an aerostat which, at the beginning of the night, was hovering over Paris. »14

Commissioners assessing the use of municipal subsidies got more and more interested in this place as worries regarding industrial fumes grew15. In the early 1890s, the tour Saint-Jacques laboratory was encouraged to pursue a surveillance of the artificial contamination of the Parisian atmosphere16. Its observations of factories’ chimneys were compared with meteorological data gathered by the Montsouris observatory and eventually, in 1895, both institutions merged.

Thanks to the data gathered in Montsouris, at the top of the tour Saint Jacques, as well as in several stations that complemented the measurements, specificities of the Parisian sky were analysed as the combination of atmospheric, global, phenomena and alterations brought by the city. The more elevated the position was, the cleaner the air. Within the city, variations could also be identified. Winds could sweep up the ground and clean the Parisian air, but meteorological phenomena had more diverse consequences. 

Changing direction of winds might indeed worsen the situation. At the turn of the century, dust and smoke were regularly tackled to the ground during the winter, plunging the city into darkness in the middle of the day17.

From the accounts of such phenomena, it appears that urban life not only modified the city’s air but also the sky above the town: Paris, as other industrial towns, had its own, local, sky18). 

It was connected to the global atmosphere, then largely understood as an “ocean of air”19, and as such it can be described as a corrupted river.

This allows us to define the Parisian sky as the space comprised between roofs and chimneys for its lower level and the altitude where the corruption of the city dissolved. In the late 19th Century and first decades of the 20th Century, this space was thus a “garbage sky”. But it was also more and more occupied by human artefacts and their animal envoys. 

PREMIERE EXPOSITION NATIONALE DE PIGEONS VOYAGEURS MILITAIRES, GARE DES BALLONS, ARENES AEROSTATIQUES ET DE COLOMBOPHILIE, 1890. CCØ  Paris Musées / Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris.

The ballooning revival and the pigeon-fancying development that followed the 1870 defeat filled this space with birds and balloons, but flying devices were not the only inhabitants of this space. 

Looking at the keyword “espace aérien” (airspace) in the newspapers of the time indicates that this expression is first used in a very local sense, to designate a new territory that hosts human technological devices of aero-mobility such as balloons, airships and later planes of course, but also electrical lines, antennas and radio waves.

The Parisian airspace of these years appears to be very much crowded, full of material devices20. It was also a very local sky, first because the way it was used provided infrastructure for the city life, but also, and maybe more importantly because it provided a daily spectacle for Parisians.We can say that the sky provided free entertainment.

Looking up to the skies to admire a show was an established popular practice, which inherited from official balloon ascents, fireworks displays or even observation of astronomical phenomena21. It might be said that flights over Paris in airships and planes renewed the program. 

Despite a ban on flying over Paris at low altitude and despite the interruption caused by the 1st World War, the show lasted up to the 1920s. 

In the sole year 1919, Jules Védrines landed on the roof of Galeries Lafayette, Beckler landed in front of the Grand Palais and Sergent Gaudefroy flew under the Arc de Triomphe22.

Progressively, however, the airspace partially emptied as flights over Paris became more closely controlled and ballooning practices decreased. In a significant way, the meaning attributed to airspace evolved to designate more and more a region overlooking a nation23 within which aerial routes interconnected local skies.

Parisian terminals of such routes were located in the suburbs. Thus the Parisian sky constructed by aviation could be understood as the juxtaposition of slip roads leading to aerial routes. It overlooked the suburbs rather than the city itself, but airlines’ commercial material pictured this sky differently. 

It was the sky over the very centre of Paris and its prominent monuments that was interconnected with other skies. Some artworks suggest that aviation even enlarged the Parisian sky as for instance in this poster by Roger de Valerio where the size of the shadow of the Eiffel tower reaches London.

I put aside the threatening dimension of this interconnection which should also be discussed, to move directly to the 1950s-60s, when the “jet age” brings new planes in the Parisian sky. 

On the ground, airports changed to accommodate the new planes and the spectacle of the Parisian airspace found a new but short-lived lease of life (V.R. Schwartz, “Dimanche à Orly: The Jet-Age Airport and the Spectacle of Technology between Sky and Earth”, French Politics, Culture & Society, vol. 32, n° 3, 2014, p. 24–44; N. Roseau, « Le paradigme de la frontière. L’aéroport, miroir de la condition urbaine » in N. Roseau & M. Thébaud-Sorger (eds), L’Emprise du Vol. De l’invention à la massification : Histoire d’une culture moderne, Genève : Metispresses, 2013, p.181-194, esp. p. 187).

Aerial interconnections of the jet-age also brought new kinds of pollution. In Paris, or rather in the suburbs flown over by air roads, complaints about noise and other pollutants reached the airports’ authorities and the administration of civil aviation24. French authorities also met an international demand regarding norms and technologies aiming at limiting the discomfort imposed on residents, coming mostly from US international airports and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). A “noise committee” was established within the French administration of civil aviation and it expanded its mandate to become an “environment committee” in the late 1960s25. Noise, smells (due to kerosene exhausts), and black fumes, were acknowledged as new sources of pollution but the understanding of their extension became a techno-scientific as well as an administrative, political and public-relations issue.

At this point of the research, it appears that this extension was presented as localised by aviation authorities. In particular, the height up to which pollution was considered as significant was limited, as was the geographic extension of discomforts. As a result, this new stream of noise and pollution remained relatively disconnected from the older, and still important flow of corrupted air over the city of Paris.

So let’s consider what happened to this polluted sky resulting from the city life – the garbage sky « première manière » so to speak.

In the 1910s, the systematic analysis of air quality in Paris had stopped. The pollution had not. Later, several acute episodes of pollution in Belgium (brouillards de la Meuse in the 1930s), in the United States (Donora 1948) and in Great Britain (London smog of 1952) brought the issue of air quality back within the top priorities. In 1954, the successor of the municipal Observatory of Montsouris, now called the Laboratoire d’hygiène de la Ville de Paris, took up the task of systematic analysis of the Parisian air put aside by its predecessor26.

Municipal engineers and hygienists measured levels of carbon dioxide soon complemented by levels of “sulfuric acid” (sulfur dioxide – SO2) as well as levels of smoke and dust. Together with other investigations performed in different institutes I do not have time to present27, their work contributed to the emergence of a new socio-scientific issue, the “atmospheric pollution”, which encompassed physical and chemical, economic and sanitary, industrial and domestic, legal and administrative aspects. 

The LHVP progressively increased the number of stations of its network. The Saint-Jacques tower, which had remained a place for meteorological observation since the beginning of the 20th Century, was included in this growing network.

The work conducted by the LHVP led to more detailed descriptions of the polluted sky of Paris, stressing the “cleaning effect” of planted areas (such as the Bois de Boulogne) and local variations between different neighborhoods characterised by industrial activities and types of apparatus used for domestic heating. Over the years, the increase of data led technicians in charge of their analysis to rethink their presentation and interpretation. 

In the second half of the 1960s, Jean Pelletier, who oversaw the department “Hygiène des atmosphères” of the laboratory, promoted the use of graphical representation according to sanitary aims and to their integration in urban planning. He also sought to describe the geographical transport of pollutants. His study contributed to reinforce the image of an overall yet not uniformly polluted sky overlooking Paris and its suburbs, and his preliminary conclusions also presented the metropolis as a centre of pollution in the region, impacting its surroundings:

« Most suburban sites experience an increasein pollution when the wind comes from Paris and a clear decrease when it blows from the countryside, except for a few sites in the nearnorth-northwest suburbs where industrialemissions disrupt this pattern »28

Pelletier’s study dealt with the Paris area, but he put it in a context marked by a growing concern regarding long-range and international transport of pollutants29. Such travelling pollutants were actually under scrutiny at the LHVP as this laboratory also monitored the radioactive levels in the city30.

This surveillance was prompted by the “rapid development of applications of radioactivity”31 and its related worries. It had a truly global dimension which suggests yet another way to understand what the Parisian sky can be and how wecan describe its link to the global atmosphere.

Of course, it can still be understood as a local manifestation of global meteorological phenomena, as well as a peculiar space created by the city life. But the Parisian sky then also becomes an indicator of a global corruption. As such, the municipal laboratory dedicated to its watching participates in a transnational dynamics which contributed to the emergence of the understanding of global environmental changes.

Catherine Radtka
  1. Nous reprenons ici le texte de la communication orale, avec des modifications minimales liées à cette restitution sous forme écrite. Les références de la communication sont : C. Radtka, “From local surroundings to global phenomena, the Parisian sky as an indicator of technological and environmental change”, SHOT Annual Meeting 2022. Empire, Globalization, and Technological Change, Society for the History of Technology, New Orleans (USA), 10-13 novembre 2022. []
  2. A. Montandon, « Les (nouveaux) usages du ciel au XIXe siècle »Romantisme, vol. 197, n° 3, 2022, p. 5-10. []
  3. Regarding ballooning see M. Thébaud-Sorger, Une histoire des ballons. Invention, culture matérielle et imaginaire, 1783-1909, Paris : éditions du patrimoine, 2010, p. 28-32 and P.L.S. De Oliveira, “Martyrs made in the sky: The Zénith balloon tragedy and the construction of the French Third Republic’s first scientific heroes”Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of History of Science, vol. 74, n° 3, 2020, p. 365-386. For homing pigeons, see C. Radtka, “Le pigeon parisien, du héros militaire à la nuisance”, communication présentée au colloque Flore et Faune des villes : réalités et fictions, Urbanature, mai 2022, Paris. []
  4. L. Robène, D. Bodin, and S. Héas, « Le bonheur est dans les airs. L’aérostation : 1880-1914 »Terrain, 46, 2006, p. 123-136; P.L.S. De Oliveira, « « Ce gentlemen [sic] rider du turf atmosphérique » : l’aérostation, la masculinité aristocratique et l’imaginaire colonial au tournant du XXe siècle »Romantisme, 2022, n° 197, p. 94-106. []
  5. F. Locher, « De nouveaux territoires pour la science : Les voyages aériens de Camille Flammarion »Sociétés & Représentations, n° 21, 2006, p. 157-173; E. Courant, « L’« observatoire volant » de Camille Flammarion : enjeux médiatiques d’une science récréative »Romantisme, 2022, n° 197, p. 69-82. []
  6. See for instance Dona Sol’s argument « — J’ai un peu mal à la poitrine, répliquait-elle, et je respire si bien là-haut ! » in S. Bernhardt, Dans les nuages, impressions d’une chaise, 1878, p. 7. Dona Sol is Sarah Bernhardt’s alter ego. More generally, at the end of the century, sanitary aspects of altitude (pure air, sun, light and silence) become associated with the poetics of air travel, see Robène et al., art. cit. []
  7. S. Frioux, Les batailles de l’hygiène. Villes et environnement de Pasteur aux Trente Glorieuses, Paris : PUF, 2013. []
  8. In 1880, the number of news articles titled « Les Odeurs de Paris » shot up. The question was discussed by the Paris Municipal Council in several sessions, see esp. Adolphe Alphand, directeur des travaux, Compte rendu sommaire du discours du directeur des travaux de Paris au conseil municipal dans la séance du 9 octobre 1880 sur les odeurs et le tout à l’égout dans Paris, Paris, Chaix, 1880 (Bibliothèque de l’hôtel de ville). The address is recounted in the newspapers, i.e. Le Petit Moniteur universel, 11 octobre 1880, p. 2. Several books addressing the question were also published in the following years. This notable episode of the history of smell serves as an ending to the classic work by A. Corbin, Le Miasme et la jonquille, Paris: Flammarion, 2016 (first ed. 1982). []
  9. « étude nouvelle et qui peut avoir la plus haute portée au point de vue de l’hygiène. », in Conseil Municipal de Paris, Rapport présenté par M. Levraud au nom de la 4ecommission de surveillance sur les Dépenses de l’instruction supérieure et secondaire, n° 86, 1881, p. 18. The chemical analysis of air undertaken by Albert Lévy and Félix Marboutin turned out to be very challenging. []
  10. The city authorized the use of this medieval tower, renovated in the 1850s, for physics experiments on the occasion of a lunar eclipse in September (Le Matin, 25 septembre 1885, p. 3). In November, several newspapers mentioned the pursuit of experiments and, more particularly, the meteorological photographs of the Parisian sky and the installation of an apparatus to measure the electrical tension of the atmosphere (Le Rappel, 25 novembre 1885, p. 4; some of these photographs are held at the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris). In December, the journalist Maxime Dubreuil noted the organization of a public conference on the atmosphere by the “laboratoire d’études physiques de la tour Saint-Jacques” (L’Événement, 25 décembre 1885, p.3). The laboratory was inaugurated, under this name, in February 1886. The event benefited from an important coverage by newspapers (for instance Georges Montorgueil, “Dans la tour Saint-Jacques”, Paris, 15 février 1886, p. 1-2 ; Le Rappel, 16 février 1886, p. 3; “Le laboratoire de la tour Saint-Jacques, Le Petit journal, 19 février 1886, p. 2 ; « Un laboratoire de physique dans la tour Saint-Jacques », Le Constitutionnel, 16 février 1886, p. 2). []
  11. First elected in May 1884 for the 4th arr. (quartier de Saint-Merry), he was relected in 1887. In 1889 he ran for office in the National Assembly and got elected. He joined the radical-socialist group. []
  12. Some of the others were Charles Carré, M.P. Robert et E. Jayot. []
  13. The header image of our academic blog is a detail of one of these photographs, courtesy of the Bibliothèque de l’Hôtel de Ville, Paris. []
  14. « Il y a quelques jours, par un brouillard qui semblait être à terre fort intense, MM. Joseph Jaubert et Carré purent reconnaître, du haut de la tour, que ce brouillard avait à peine cent mètres d’épaisseur et qu’au-dessus le ciel était des plus purs. Leur attention fut surtout attirée par la lumière émise par les becs de gaz et qui était très rougeâtre. Cette remarque fut également faite par les passagers d’un aérostat qui, au commencement de la nuit, planait sur Paris. » (Le Rappel, 15 novembre 1885). []
  15. J. Jaubert and his laboratory also certainly benefited from a positive press coverage and – but this must be more thoroughly researched – from his social skills (as well as Chassaing’s). []
  16. Conseil municipal de Paris, Rapport présenté́ par M. Paul VIGUIER, au nom de la 6e Sous-commission (1) du Comité du budget et du contrôle, sur le chap. XXI, art. 6 (Subvention à l’observatoire astronomique du Bureau des longitudes), et art. 7 (Publication quotidienne des observations météorologiques ; et au nom de la 6e Commission sur le chap. XXI, art. 5 bis (Subvention à l’observatoire de physique de la Tour-Saint-Jacques), n° 214, 1893 ; Conseil municipal de Paris, Rapport présenté́ par M. Paul VIGUIER, au nom de la 6e Sous-Commission du Comité du Budget et du Contrôle (1), sur les articles ci-après du projet du Budget de l’exercice 1895 …, n° 236, 1894. []
  17. Several episodes of particularly opaque fogs are reported at the turn of 19th and 20th centuries. On such episodes, reporters interviewed Joseph Jaubert who explained that the sky above the fog remained clear and that darkness was reinforced by dust and fumes. See for instance Robert Sand, « La nuit à midi », Le Petit Bleu de Paris, 1er décembre 1898 ; or in December 1908 articles in L’Éclair, La Lanterne, La Nouvelle Presse, Le Grand National, Paris, … and one year later “Paris dans les ténèbres”, Le Gaulois, 16 novembre 1909. []
  18. As such it could be studied, not only for its chemical and bacteriological properties, but also for its length, see for instance the suggestion made by count de Cardonnet During a session of the scientific commission of the AeroClub de France, « Le comte de Chardonnet se propose d’étudier, dès maintenant, jusqu’à quelle altitude l’atmosphère est contaminée par les gaz et les émanations des usines, des grandes agglomérations », (reported in Le Public, 4 décembre 1908, p. 3 ; L’écho de Paris, 2 décembre 1908, p. 5 ; La Liberté, 3 décembre 1908, p. 3 []
  19. Since the 1820s and Alexander von Humboldt’s works, the meteorological domain had extended to the entire globe. In the 1840s, Arago stressed the multiplicity of parameters involved in weather modification and, hence, the impossibility of weather forecast. In the 1850s, the theory of “atmospheric waves” developed by Adolphe Quételet provided a first model of weather evolution. The idea of “ocean of air” was familiar to readers of popular meteorologies, see for instance Flammarion’s Météorologie populaire []
  20. For a visual echo of this statement, see for instance the artwork by an anonymous artist, Tour Eiffel, grande roue, montgolfière, aéroplane au-dessus de toits et cheminées preserved by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. []
  21. David Aubin shows how astronomy became a popular practice in 19th Century Paris, in between entertainment and education, see D. Aubin, “The Moon for a two-pence: street telescopes in nineteenth-century Paris and the epistemology of popular stargazing”, Early Popular Visual Culture, vol. 15 n° 2, 2017, p. 125-151. At the turn of the 20th century, this street astronomy practice decreased but astronomical events, such as solar eclipses, still provided spectacles for the multitude, see C. Pellarin, « « Deux millions de Parisiens tenant deux millions de verres noircis » L’éclipse totale de soleil du 17 avril 1912, un événement médiatique »Sociétés & Représentations, vol.  54, n° 2, 2022, p. 337-359. []
  22. Le film d’actualité Pathé “CONQUETE DU CIEL” (archives Pathé-Gaumont) qui regroupe des prises de vue réalisées de 1908 à 1925 montre dans sa dernière partie plusieurs de ces prouesses acrobatiques. Ce sont souvent ces images que l’on retrouve dans les films que l’on peut visionner sur les plateformes Youtube, Dailymotion ou encore dans les sélections d’archives réalisées par l’INA. []
  23. B. Vaillot, “Nationaliser le ciel. L’invention de la souveraineté aérienne entre France et Allemagne au début du 20e siècle”, 20&21. Revue d’histoire, n° 152, 2021, p. 107-124. []
  24. We are grateful to Clair Juilliet who shared his research on this aspect with the project “Ciels de Paris”. []
  25. Archives de l’Inspection Générale de l’aviation civile, versement du 25 août 1988, Commission du bruit – Commission de l’environnement (Archives nationales, cotes 19910253/1-19910253/61). []
  26. See our previous blogpost. []
  27. But Régis Briday presented this dynamic in the talk « La pollution de l’air à Paris et sa banlieue dans les années 1950-1960 : la construction d’une problématique partagée ? » at the seminar « La région parisienne, territoires et culture », archives de Paris, 10 juin 2022. []
  28. « les sites de banlieue subissent pour la plupart des accroissements de pollution quand le vent vient de Paris et une très nette diminution quand il souffle de la campagne, excepté toutefois dans quelques sites de la proche banlieue du Nord-Nord Ouest où les émissions industrielles viennent perturber ce schéma » (LHVP, Surveillance de la pollution atmosphérique dans la région parisienne (1966-1967-1968), sd., p. 29). More generally, for references used in this section, we refer to the blogpost “Surveillance de la pollution atmosphérique par le Laboratoire d’Hygiène de la Ville de Paris”. []
  29. Models of long-range transport of pollutants existed from the early Twentieth century. However until the 1950s-60s when the monitoring of nuclear particles and the study of acid rains developed, the idea of possible dilution of pollution in the atmosphere prevailed, see R. Briday, “A history of Chemistry of the global atmosphere. Expertise and disciplinary aspects in the ozone layer and climate change case studies”, PhD in History of science and technology, Paris: EHESS, 2014. []
  30. On an international level, 1955 saw the establishment of the The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) established by the General Assembly to “assess the levels and effects of exposure to ionizing radiation on human health and the environment”. On this Committee see N. Herran, “Unscare and Conceal: The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation and the Origin of International Radiation Monitoring”, in S. Turchetti & P. Roberts (eds.), The Surveillance Imperative: Geosciences during the Cold War and Beyond, London: Palgrave, 2014, p. 69-84. []
  31. LHVP, « La radioactivité dans ses rapports avec l’hygiène générale et la protection sanitaire », École nationale de la santé publique, stage 2°-25 février 1961, 7 p., cit. p.1 (document conservé par le SPSE, non coté). []

OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Catherine Radtka (20 novembre 2022). Le ciel parisien, témoin de changements techniques et environnementaux – C. Radtka. Ciels de Paris. Consulté le 11 février 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/mdsj


Laisser un commentaire

Votre adresse e-mail ne sera pas publiée. Les champs obligatoires sont indiqués avec *

Ce site utilise Akismet pour réduire les indésirables. En savoir plus sur comment les données de vos commentaires sont utilisées.