Industry Worship

I am reading a history of pollution right now, but really I guess its a history of industry. But at each period there is a shift on what they think pollution is. At first, they knew many industrial processes were bad, and they moved them away from cities, and talked about bad vespers, and mad hatters. 

But then a strange thing happened where the author says a nice line, industry becomes a form of worship. And people start accepting pollution into their worlds. Factories now go to densely populated areas. People and even doctors say that pollutions of various sorts actually clean areas. Like rivers, with dye factory runoff or disinfect the air with smoke from chimneys. Smoking back then wasn't considered so bad.

But people saw industry as sign of hope better things to come. Or maybe more as hope.

The authors talk about this period as well being strange because we started seeing the earth as a commodity asking what can be extracted and not what happens after that. 

 At first pollution was seen as a nuisance, then a necessary and amazing thing. 

However, around the time people discovered the germ, other people began asking questions like does smoke really purify the air?