The Impact of Industrialization on London Health.
A new multidisciplinary project funded by the City of London Archaeological Trust Rosemary Green grant will be using the latest imaging techniques on a large sample of archaeological skeletal assemblages from several post-medieval and medieval sites across London as well as other non-metropolitan areas of England for comparison.
This project aims to establish for the 1st time a synthetic overview from the physical evidence of how health patterns have changed up to the present day in London and the role that industrialization has played in determining the factors critical to the health of its population, past and present.
One of the most influential changes in our environment, both physical and social, over the past 1000 years has been industrialization, bringing revolutionary wide-spread changes in our material culture, technology, medicine and environment that continue to affect us today.
All of these changes have impacted on the health and lifestyles of the modern British population. The industrial period is a pivotal age marking a shift towards increasing longevity and the chronic illnesses associated with aging, as well as a seeming rise in ‘man-made’ diseases such as cancer.
To what extent, then, are these illnesses a product of the industrialized environment we have created? Have these diseases always been present or are they arising as a consequence of our modern, mechanized lifestyles?
Radiol Open J. 2016; 2(1): 1-3. doi: 10.17140/ROJ-2-111