More on the cultural history of Glasswort
2nd July 2008, Wednesday
The appearance of the word Glasswort in English during the 16th century is reasonably contemporaneous with a 16th Century resurgence in English glassmaking, which had suffered a long decline after Roman times. This resurgence was led by immigrant glassmakers from Lorraine and from Venice. The Venetians brought with them the technology of cristallo, the immaculately clear glass that used soda ash – sodium carbonate - as a flux. These glassmakers would have recognized Salicornia europaea growing in England as a source for soda ash. Prior to their arrival, it was said that the plant “hath no name in English.”
Production of sodium carbonate was however industrialized in the late 18th century with the introduction of the Leblanc method, a two-stage process using salt, sulphuric acid, limestone and coal. Nicolas Leblanc patented his method in 1791 in response to the offer of a prize from Louis XVI, but was overtaken by the events of the French Revolution, during which his production plant was seized and trade secrets publicized. He committed suicide in 1806.
The Leblanc process plants were quite damaging to the local environment, provoking lawsuits and legislation which culminated in the first modern air pollution legislation, when the British Parliament passed the first of several Alkali Acts in 1863.
The process of generating salt cake from salt and sulphuric acid released hydrochloric acid gas, and because this acid was industrially useless in the early 1800s, it was simply vented into the atmosphere. Also, an insoluble, smelly solid waste was produced.
An 1839 suit against soda works alleged, “the gas from these manufactories is of such a deleterious nature as to blight everything within its influence, and is alike baneful to health and property. The herbage of the fields in their vicinity is scorched, the gardens neither yield fruit nor vegetables; many flourishing trees have lately become rotten naked sticks. Cattle and poultry droop and pine away. It tarnishes the furniture in our houses, and when we are exposed to it, which is of frequent occurrence, we are afflicted with coughs and pains in the head … all of which we attribute to the Alkali works.”