Pollution is the main cause of Notre Dame Cathedral's deterioration
While atmospheric pollution is widely recognized as a major driver of stone degradation and black crust formation on historic calcareous buildings, other environmental factors such as climate change, natural weathering, and moisture fluctuations also play significant roles.
The retrieved literature contains evidence supporting the idea that air pollution significantly damages historical stone monuments (e.g., through black crusts and gypsum formation). However, other papers emphasize that climate change, moisture, salt crystallization, and natural climatic weathering are equally or more critical depending on the context. Thus, asserting pollution as the definitive 'main' cause is contested by multifactorial assessments of heritage decay.
Yu Yan, Yansong Wang. A Review of Atmospheric Deterioration and Sustainable Conservation of Calcareous Stone in Historical Buildings and Monuments. 2024. https://doi.org/10.3390/su162310751
Paper 6 reviews how atmospheric pollutants like SO2, NOx, and particulates accelerate the deterioration and acid corrosion of calcareous stone in historical buildings.
Elena Sesana, Alexandre S. Gagnon, Chiara Ciantelli, JoAnn Cassar, John Hughes. Climate change impacts on cultural heritage: A literature review. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.710
Paper 1 highlights climate change factors such as temperature, moisture, and extreme weather events as major overarching impacts on cultural heritage sites.
See more details
T. Lamhasni, Houssam El-Marjaoui, Abdelmajid El Bakkali, S. A. Lyazidi, M. Haddad, A. Ben-Ncer, F. Benyaich, A. Bonazza, M. Tahri. Air pollution impact on architectural heritage of Morocco: Combination of synchronous fluorescence and ATR-FTIR spectroscopies for the analyses of black crusts deposits.. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2019.03.109
Paper 9 documents how air pollution causes severe disfigurement and degradation, specifically gypsum black crusts, on historical limestone monuments.
Terje Grøntoft, JoAnn Cassar. An assessment of the contribution of air pollution to the weathering of limestone heritage in Malta. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-020-09027-x
Paper 8 finds that natural climatic factors, sea salt, and humidity fluctuations can account for more weathering variation on limestone heritage than air pollution alone.
The paper trail · every fact has a biography
Challenge the receipt
Citation formatting by citeproc-js (Frank Bennett) and the Citation Style Language project. Source and licenses.
Terms · Privacy · How verdicts work · Dispute this receipt