Pollution History

For many years, Hughes' mother suffered from ill health due to a brain tumor. It is this and other personal histories that occupy his thoughts about mass extinction, climate change, plastic pollution, and other forms of pollution. In 2001, Friends of the Earth published a report titled 'Pollution and Poverty Breaking the Link,' revealing stark connections between deprivation and pollution. Hughes grew up in Glasshoughton, a district in the coal mining town of Castleford, West Yorkshire. The district was listed as one of the wards in England with a high index of multiple deprivation (in the highest 10 - 20 percent of wards) and with industrial emissions of over 1 tonne of carcinogens (1999).