Archive for the 'Environmental Pollution' Category

The sector of the population known in conservative circles as “alarmists” (read: anyone who considers environmental pollution to be a serious topic) have long speculated gloomily about the link between agricultural chemicals and environmental pollution. It stands to reason, they assert, that agricultural chemicals and environmental pollution be linked. The agricultural chemicals most often linked to environmental pollution include veterinary medicines, pesticides, non-organic fertilizers, and other chemicals designed to eradicate disease in crops and animals on American farms. Since these chemicals are responsible essentially for poisoning forms of life (yes, Virginia, diseases are forms of life too), it stands to reason, “alarmists” say, that we should be concerned about runoff from the application of agricultural chemicals entering our groundwater, streams, and soil.

Conservatives wouldn’t even bother to debate on some points. Even since the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”, it’s been well known that pesticides in the environment–DDT in particular–are responsible for the massive die-offs of birds in regions of America that depend on agriculture for survival. And it’s equally well-known that veterinary hormones and other chemicals used in agriculture have harmful effects on human beings upon direct exposure.

The point of debate isn’t that there’s a link between agricultural chemicals and environmental pollution. The point of debate is that we should be troubled by that link, and by the dependence on agricultural chemicals found in many factory and smaller farms. Sure, these chemicals hurt us, say the conservatives. But they can’t be hurting us all that badly. The link between agricultural chemicals and environmental pollution is there, but it’s nothing to worry about.

What we needed in order to resolve the debate was a good method of quantifying the amount of damage agricultural chemicals were doing and the amount of environmental pollution they were creating. Now, thanks to researchers at the US Geological Survey and Colorado State University at Pueblo, we have that method: earthworms.

These researchers collected soil samples from three fields. One field had been treated with biosolid fertilizers. One had been treated with pig manure. The third, the control field, hadn’t been treated with fertilizer in seven years. The researchers extracted earthworms from the soil samples and tested them for traces of 77 known dangerous chemicals used in agriculture.

They expected to find traces of these chemicals in the biosolid and pig manure fields, and they did: some 20 dangerous chemicals in each. The surprise came when they tested the control field, the one that hadn’t been exposed to chemicals in years. Seven dangerous chemicals were found infesting the bodies of the earthworms.

There is a link between agricultural chemicals and environmental pollution–even in places where agricultural chemicals aren’t directly applied to the environment.

So we must ask: when is it proper for an alarmist to start raising an alarm?

Leadville, Colorado is one of the jewels of American city-building. If Denver is the mile-high city, Leadville is the Two-Mile High City, rising 10,152 feet above sea level–the highest city elevation in the United States. A product of the gold and silver rushes of the late nineteenth century, Leadville was famous for its quick mineral strikes and for some of its well-known residents and visitors, among them OK Corral gunfighter Doc Holliday and playwright and self-proclaimed genius Oscar Wilde. Wilde made Leadville infamous with his comments about “the only rational method of art criticism” he’d ever seen, posted above a piano in a Leadville saloon: “Please don’t shoot the piano player; he is doing his best.” Even after the end of the Leadville silver boom in 1893, Leadville remained a popular leave destination for soldiers stationed nearby, as well as a well-populated suburb for former mining families and a tourist destination for anyone interested in one of the most colorful chapters of America’s past.

Now all of that is threatened by industrial pollution and environmental degradation. The miners of Leadville dug deeply into the earth and brought out its mineral riches. In the process, they had to drain off water poisoned by mining equipment and toxic minerals loosed from the earth. The government built a drainage pipe in the 1940s to leach this water into the Arkansas River, where it would be carried to the sea. Classic example of industrial pollution and environmental degradation, and one for which the town of Leadville may have paid–with its life.

The drainage tunnel, long unmaintained with the late-1980s closure of the Leadville mines, collapsed at some point in the early 1990s. The toxic water, instead of draining off “safely” into the ocean, has instead been backing up in the ruined drainage tunnel ever since.

As of 2008, the tunnel is filled with one billion gallons of poisonous water. At any moment, heavy snows, shifts in the earth, or literally any number of disturbances could cause the tunnel to crack. When that happens–not if, but when that happens–Leadville and its 2,000+ residents will be directly in the path of the toxic flow, the tragic inheritors of industrial pollution and environmental degradation.

In February of 2008, the town authorities declared a state of emergency. Children are made to practice evacuation drills. The federal government can do nothing. It’s reminiscent of the “duck and cover” atomic-bomb culture of the 1950s. Only in this case, there is no enemy army aiming missiles at us. There’s no easily-blamed villain–beyond industrial pollution and environmental degradation, that same industrial pollution and environmental degradation than in a sick twist of fate made Leadville famous to begin with. In the words of Pogo Possum: the town of Leadville has met the enemy, and he is us.

Leadville, Colorado is one of the jewels of American city-building. If Denver is the mile-high city, Leadville is the Two-Mile High City, rising 10,152 feet above sea level–the highest city elevation in the United States. A product of the gold and silver rushes of the late nineteenth century, Leadville was famous for its quick mineral strikes and for some of its well-known residents and visitors, among them OK Corral gunfighter Doc Holliday and playwright and self-proclaimed genius Oscar Wilde. Wilde made Leadville infamous with his comments about “the only rational method of art criticism” he’d ever seen, posted above a piano in a Leadville saloon: “Please don’t shoot the piano player; he is doing his best.” Even after the end of the Leadville silver boom in 1893, Leadville remained a popular leave destination for soldiers stationed nearby, as well as a well-populated suburb for former mining families and a tourist destination for anyone interested in one of the most colorful chapters of America’s past.

Now all of that is threatened by industrial pollution and environmental degradation. The miners of Leadville dug deeply into the earth and brought out its mineral riches. In the process, they had to drain off water poisoned by mining equipment and toxic minerals loosed from the earth. The government built a drainage pipe in the 1940s to leach this water into the Arkansas River, where it would be carried to the sea. Classic example of industrial pollution and environmental degradation, and one for which the town of Leadville may have paid–with its life.

The drainage tunnel, long unmaintained with the late-1980s closure of the Leadville mines, collapsed at some point in the early 1990s. The toxic water, instead of draining off “safely” into the ocean, has instead been backing up in the ruined drainage tunnel ever since.

As of 2008, the tunnel is filled with one billion gallons of poisonous water. At any moment, heavy snows, shifts in the earth, or literally any number of disturbances could cause the tunnel to crack. When that happens–not if, but when that happens–Leadville and its 2,000+ residents will be directly in the path of the toxic flow, the tragic inheritors of industrial pollution and environmental degradation.

In February of 2008, the town authorities declared a state of emergency. Children are made to practice evacuation drills. The federal government can do nothing. It’s reminiscent of the “duck and cover” atomic-bomb culture of the 1950s. Only in this case, there is no enemy army aiming missiles at us. There’s no easily-blamed villain–beyond industrial pollution and environmental degradation, that same industrial pollution and environmental degradation than in a sick twist of fate made Leadville famous to begin with. In the words of Pogo Possum: the town of Leadville has met the enemy, and he is us.

You’ve no doubt heard a great deal about environmental pollution–but what do you really know about its causes, its effects, and what you can do about both of them? In this series of five essay questions, we’ll find out. So get your pencils and paper ready, and let’s get started, right now, with changing the world.

Environmental Pollution Cause And Effect Essay Question #1

What are you doing in your life, right now, to cause environmental pollution in your neighborhood?

Don’t just dash off an answer to this–think carefully. How do you dispose of your garbage? Do you sort your recycling? How do you get to work, to school, or into town to socialize with friends? Do you take a bus? Do you drive a car? And what products do you use to clean your house? To store your groceries? What groceries do you buy?

How much of an impact–positive or negative–do you make on the world?

Environmental Pollution Cause And Effect Essay Question #2

Given your answer to #1–how can you reduce any negative impact you make on the world? If you throw away your garbage indiscriminately, could you implement a recycling policy instead? If you drive everywhere you go within your city, could you carpool or take public transportation–or just walk or ride a bike? Could you get exercise and help to save the planet, both? Could you join a local activist group? Could you stop buying products from companies that pollute and choose green alternative products instead?

Environmental Pollution Cause And Effect Essay Question #3

What groups exist in your area to help stop environmental pollution? Is there a Greenpeace chapter, for example, or a PETA chapter? Are there protest groups or community action initiatives? Is there a community recycling program that you could get involved in? If these programs don’t exist, what would it take to start one? Who could you get to be involved?

Environmental Pollution Cause And Effect Essay Question #4

What projects might your environmental action group get involved in? Who are the major industrial leaders in your community? Who would you need to talk to in order to get information to them or ask them for information? Is there an easy way for you to talk to a community leader of some type, someone who has some policy-making authority over your community’s air and water standards? What could you say to him that would make a difference in your community? What could your group offer to him to help implement your environmental solutions?

Environmental Pollution Cause And Effect Essay Question #5

Based on these four questions: is there hope for the planet? Why or why not?

And if not–are you sure? Couldn’t you change that answer if you wanted to?

The sector of the population known in conservative circles as “alarmists” (read: anyone who considers environmental pollution to be a serious topic) have long speculated gloomily about the link between agricultural chemicals and environmental pollution. It stands to reason, they assert, that agricultural chemicals and environmental pollution be linked. The agricultural chemicals most often linked to environmental pollution include veterinary medicines, pesticides, non-organic fertilizers, and other chemicals designed to eradicate disease in crops and animals on American farms. Since these chemicals are responsible essentially for poisoning forms of life (yes, Virginia, diseases are forms of life too), it stands to reason, “alarmists” say, that we should be concerned about runoff from the application of agricultural chemicals entering our groundwater, streams, and soil.

Conservatives wouldn’t even bother to debate on some points. Even since the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”, it’s been well known that pesticides in the environment–DDT in particular–are responsible for the massive die-offs of birds in regions of America that depend on agriculture for survival. And it’s equally well-known that veterinary hormones and other chemicals used in agriculture have harmful effects on human beings upon direct exposure.

The point of debate isn’t that there’s a link between agricultural chemicals and environmental pollution. The point of debate is that we should be troubled by that link, and by the dependence on agricultural chemicals found in many factory and smaller farms. Sure, these chemicals hurt us, say the conservatives. But they can’t be hurting us all that badly. The link between agricultural chemicals and environmental pollution is there, but it’s nothing to worry about.

What we needed in order to resolve the debate was a good method of quantifying the amount of damage agricultural chemicals were doing and the amount of environmental pollution they were creating. Now, thanks to researchers at the US Geological Survey and Colorado State University at Pueblo, we have that method: earthworms.

These researchers collected soil samples from three fields. One field had been treated with biosolid fertilizers. One had been treated with pig manure. The third, the control field, hadn’t been treated with fertilizer in seven years. The researchers extracted earthworms from the soil samples and tested them for traces of 77 known dangerous chemicals used in agriculture.

They expected to find traces of these chemicals in the biosolid and pig manure fields, and they did: some 20 dangerous chemicals in each. The surprise came when they tested the control field, the one that hadn’t been exposed to chemicals in years. Seven dangerous chemicals were found infesting the bodies of the earthworms.

There is a link between agricultural chemicals and environmental pollution–even in places where agricultural chemicals aren’t directly applied to the environment.

So we must ask: when is it proper for an alarmist to start raising an alarm?

Pollution, environmental or not, poisons not only the world we live in but the food we eat. We all know that smog and other air pollution issues shorten the human lifespan and promote the development of respiratory diseases and bacterial infections. And we all know that water pollution/environmental damage leads to the breeding of malaria-infested mosquitoes and the spread of lethal illness. But what we sometimes forget is that these diseases don’t only shorten the human lifespan and poison and infect humans. All life suffers from pollution and environmental damage from humans on down the food chain. One might say that the chickens are coming home to roost–except there are no more chickens, nor is there anything else safe to eat at all.

That was what was on the mind of Ron Fink, the president and CEO of RGF Food Safety Systems, when he initially patented his food processing technology in 1997. For six years, RGF was the industry leader in treating food supplies in order to remove bacterial infections and to reverse, to some extent, the damage caused by pollution and environmental issues. A court case and a non-competition agreement in 2003 forced RGF out of the market for years more–leaving the patented technology out of food warehouses and making our food supply slowly less safe.

Now, in 2008, RGF is back with a vengeance. Its legal issues are cleared and it can continue its mission of fighting pollution and environmental hazards in the nation’s food supply.

RGF’s technology works on ozone-friendly ultraviolet principles, helping not only to keep food free of disease, but to help prevent the underlying pollution/environmental related causes of food-borne disease in the first place. RGF also provides companies with technical training in order to help them learn to operate their plants according to environmentally sound principles, from non-chemical air treatments in the food processing plants to “green” wastewater recycling.

In addition to its food processing work, RGF also implements a series of “EnviroVision” plans for various businesses, offering consulting work and implementation advice for a variety of patented food, air, and water purification technologies.

RGF is big business, yes, with clients around the world. But it’s rare to see an example of big business with a conscience: a firm that doesn’t exploit its workers or its planet, but that takes upon itself the responsibility of helping to keep the food supply clean and to fight the pollution/environmental degradation issues that increasingly plague our post-industrial society. It’s hard to imagine any factory farm-style corporation doing the same.

What is environmental pollution? One thousand years ago, the question wouldn’t have even made sense. The very concept that human beings could be killing the planet by trying to make it easier for themselves to survive wouldn’t have made sense. But in our modern world, the question “What is environmental pollution?” not only makes sense–it makes too much sense. And in many ways it’s a question that doesn’t need to be answered. We all know too well what environmental pollution is and what the consequences are of ignoring it.

The first real record in the Western world of a concept of environmental pollution came in during the reign of Edward I of England, who banned the burning of sea-coal in the late thirteenth century. Medieval Arab scholars discussed issues related to environmental quality and environmental protection from the ninth century forward, which makes some sense considering the delicate balance of the ecosystem necessary to maintain a nomadic hunter/gatherer lifestyle. (Anyone who’s read “Changes In The Land” is familiar with the environmental awareness among the American Indians–one of the major reasons the arrival of the Europeans was so disastrous for that group is the fact that European development destroyed many of the native ecosystems of the Indians, making it impossible for them to maintain their non-agricultural lifestyle.) But other than these glimpses, there was no concept of contamination–no answer to the question “What is environmental pollution.”

The real concept of environmental pollution started to emerge at the same time as factories emerged in Western Europe. Suddenly the consequences of taking full advantage of the earth became real and obvious as the air around London darkened and thickened and the water in the Thames slowly changed to poison. Environmental pollution entered the legal sphere fully in the late nineteenth century when major American industrial centers like Chicago and Cincinnati passed some of the first clean air laws, with mixed results. Yet these was still a sense that environmental pollution was mythical and the concern over it alarmism. After all, humans had exploited the land for millennia with no ill effects–why should trouble start now? Never mind that for millennia humans hadn’t had the power to damage the land that they do today–without an answer for the question “What is environmental pollution?”, there was no possibility of addressing the critics.

Today, as we said, there’s almost no need to ask the question. Everyone knows the answer to the question: “What is environmental pollution?” Environmental pollution is the sting in our nose when we breathe, the years taken off of our life when we drink the water, the feeling of doom we get when we look at the rising price of dwindling oil supplies. We know what environmental pollution is–and we know that at last, we need to do something about it.

All right, enough of this hippy-dippy nonsense. It’s time to stop talking about how to solve the problems of environmental pollution, a phenomenon that, according to recent reports from the World Health Organization and the World Bank, is responsible for the death of one in five people around the world every year. That’s just not fast enough! If all of us work together, we can help to cause environmental pollution to the point where we can shave entire decades, even centuries off of the lifetime of human beings on this planet. So let’s get started!

Step #1: Increase Your Carbon Footprint.

Your carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide gas that you release into the environment every day, just by virtue of existing. Since carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere is the single biggest cause of global warming through the greenhouse effect, a positive carbon footprint means that you’re releasing more carbon into the atmosphere than the environment can compensate for through natural means. In the United States, one household uses up an average of 19 metric tons of carbon gas every year, gas that remains trapped in the sky, slowly heating up the planet, melting the polar ice caps, and making the world hotter and harder to live in every moment.

You can do far better than that! If you’re carpooling or biking to work, stop immediately and buy an SUV. Buy one for every member of your family. Drive everywhere you go, even to your next-door neighbor’s house: why should you take any responsibility for the environment? Are we trying to cause environmental pollution here or aren’t we?

Step #2: Consume, Consume, Consume.

Plastic is one of the most common materials used in consumer goods, and one of the most difficult to create. To create a plastic housing, to package it, and to ship it to a store near you costs massive amounts of petroleum, earthly riches that can never be renewed in your lifetime. Increase the rate of petroleum consumption by buying as much as you can–the more worthless the product, the better! Buy so much that the store runs out of inventory and has to order more. Manufacturing will go up and fossil fuels will go down! As a bonus, more waste products will be dumped into the water and air–now that’s how to cause environmental pollution!

Step #3: Ignore All Advice Contrary To This Guide.

If lawmakers in the United States can do it, so can you! Any piece of information you can get–information about exactly how deadly environmental pollution is, exactly why we need to care about it, and exactly why we need to take action today in our daily lives to stop environmental pollution–is going to slow you down in your goal, which is to cause environmental pollution. So stop reading and learning–right now!

Stop learning! That’s the best way, after all, to cause environmental pollution.

If you’ve heard of Vunisinu, a tiny fishing village in Fiji, you’ve probably heard of it in passing. For most, the village is nothing more than a dot in the southeastern coastal mangrove swamps while flying in to SUV-Nausori International Airport. But for anyone interested in global environmental problems–pollution in all its forms being chief among these–Vunisinu is nothing less than a ray of light in a darkening, smog-encrusted world.

Like life on earth, it all began with the fish. Vunisinu’s thirty-six families entirely depend on fishing to ensure their survival. We’re not talking about a simple catch of three or four dinner-quality salmon every day: we’re talking about a steady diet of prawns, mud crabs, and other delicacies that could cost $50 in a New York restaurant for a single diner, yet all of it plucked out of the ocean for free by the villages of Vunisinu. Vunisinu is located next to a massive coral reef, one of the classic sources of life on earth–and a subject familiar to any steady student of global environmental problems, pollution, and other grim topics. The coral reefs are slowly dying, victims of global environmental problems, pollution, and other causes–as the villages of Vunisinu learned.

When the fish yields began to decline–so much so that villagers began to import canned seafood from larger towns nearby–the families of Vunisinu initially blamed poachers. Poachers in the mangrove swamps of Fiji are fairly aggressive, actually going so far as to blow up parts of the reef with dynamite and to directly poison the water so as to kill large numbers of fish and massive swaths of coral at a single blow. This alone might count for global environmental problems/pollution in some interpretations.

But the real global environmental problems and pollution were from another source: the villagers themselves. Modern plumbing in Vunisinu sent “gray water” (wastewater) directly into the swamps and the coral. Trash and runoff from local pig farms was also routinely thrown away in the swamps and the sea with no thought of the consequences. After all, Vunisinu is a rural community, far away from the obvious effects of pollution in urban environments. Who knew that throwing one’s trash in the ocean could cause such global environmental problems and pollution? Who knew that a coral reef would be so easy to kill?

Today, Vunisinu has cleaned up its act. Compost toilets maintained by the “Enviroclean” company prevent the flushing of wastewater into the ocean, and trash is now collected and composted rather than simply discarded in the swamp. For nearly ten years now Vunisinu has worked to maintain its coral and its environmental purity. And the results–thousands of mud crabs, swimming in the fishing nets–are not only wonderful to think about, but delicious on a family dinner plate.

“Environmental pollution–it’s not my problem.” Is this something you’ve heard? Is this something you’ve said? Is this something you believe?

If it is, consider opening your eyes and ears, because evidence from the World Health Organization and the World Bank strongly indicates that environmental pollution is everybody’s problem. According to these organizations’ estimates, some 20% of premature death worldwide can be related to environmental factors.

Imagine five people you know, and then imagine one of them dead due to environmental pollution. That’s not an abstract fear: that’s everybody’s problem. Granted, the majority of the “death statistics” are gathered in extremely poor parts of the world, most prominently sub-Saharan Africa (where these one in five deaths are almost always children under the age of six.)

“But environmental factors, that could mean anything,” you may think. The WHO/World Bank evidence cites specific pollution issues that are linked to premature death. The biggest offenders are water and air pollution–unclean drinking water and unsafe clouds of toxic smoke wafting over communities–with lead-based contamination coming in a grimly close third.

The biggest offender when it comes to deaths caused by environmental pollution is respiratory infections, which cause some 4 million child deaths per year. The usual cause of these infections is indoor airborne pollution. Cook fires fill the air of a house with grease, smoke, and other irritants, which quickly sap infant health. Outdoor cook fires are no better and simply spread the problem around, compounding it with existing chemical fires from burning plastic and poisoned animals. A close second infection caused by the application of pesticides, which kills another 3.5 million adults. Malaria and poisoned drinking water round out the picture.

This isn’t what we tend to think of when we think of environmental pollution–the classic image is a smokestack belching green clouds, or glowing drums of nuclear waste floating in a lagoon. What the World Bank/WHO report talks about, however, isn’t about classic images: it’s about the reality of life for one of the most populous continents in the world. In a thousand small ways, environmental pollution poisons the air and the water and makes life on earth impossible.

Most of us don’t live in sub-Saharan Africa and many of us treat these pollution-related deaths as something abstract, distant from our own experience. Aristotle famously said that action at a distance is impossible; empathy at a distance may be equally so. But in the modern world, we’re not as distant from the world of extreme poverty as we think. Unfortunately, it seems–based on statistics like this–that the only distance that matters may be the gap between wealth and poverty–the gap between water that kills us and water that keeps us alive.