A sample of Peruvian ice has revealed a surge in pollution linked to mining that wasn't exceeded until the Industrial Revolution.

In the 16th century, the Spanish empire took over South America and forced Incas to work in silver mines located at the tops of mountains. Some of the pollution from the thick clouds of lead dust caused by the mining was carried 500 miles north to where it was recently discovered by scientists.

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The findings come from analysis of trace elements in a core sample collected in 2003 from the Quelccaya ice cap in Peru. The ice of glaciers and ice caps like Quelccaya gathers in layers that each hold trace amounts of elements from the atmosphere.

Drilling deep into a glacier and extracting a column of ice allows scientists to analyze the elements in the layers and create a record of environmental factors such as climate and pollution.

Paolo Gabrielli of Ohio State University and his colleagues measured a variety of trace elements, including lead, bismuth and arsenic in the Quelccaya core to track the history of mining and metallurgy in South America from 793 to 1989.

Those elements can be ejected into the atmosphere during the extraction and refining of various metals. To verify the ice core data, the team compared it with other types of environmental records such as peat collected in Tierra del Fuego off the southern tip of South America, and snow from the Coats Land region of Antarctica.

"The fact that we can detect pollution in ice from a pristine high altitude location is indicative of the continental significance of this deposition. Only a significant source of pollution could travel so far, and affect the chemistry of the snow on a remote place like Quelccaya," Gabrielli said.

Tagsperuvian ice cap, inca, ice glaciers, industrial revolution, Pollution, greenhouse effect, south america, peru