Pollution History

For many years Hughes' mother suffered ill health due to a brain tumour. It is this and other histories which preoccupy 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 - it reveals the stark links 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 per cent of wards) and with industrial emissions of over 1 tonne of carcinogens (1999).