Reduce, Reuse, Recycle; Confused?

You might have listened several times the three ways to reduce solid waste and might have been impressed to observe their rhythmic phonic but hardly have understood its real spirit because such words have become quite buzzword in our social sector.

If we talk about environment we simply express concerns over rising environmental degradation, if we talk about human rights we just be alarmed over their flagrant violations and when we discuss the wave of terrorism we just start counting the cost of terror all around the world. Instead of going to the root cause of a malady and do something practical for its eradication we mostly pay lip service to its consequences or look to others for their solution. How apathetic we are getting since we adopt a lavish and luxurious life style after the rapid advancement in our standard of living owing to the galloping development in science and technology.

About Air Pollution

Smoke-emitting vehicles plying on roads, chimneys of factories marring the air quality, heaps of garbage being openly burnt on road sides in backward countries, unrestrained burning of fossil fuels and indoor emissions owing to badly planned structure of homes has deprived us of the clean air to breath. According to a latest survey, nearly 140 million people all around the world are forced to breathe polluted air because of living in an atmosphere below the minimum level of air quality standards. We may be part of this hapless lot of the people.

What is air pollution?

Air pollution is contamination of air by the excess of various gases in the atmosphere. Air should have a moderate quantity of various gases and some of them are very essential to support the life like oxygen but the excess quantity of few of them is bad and in some cases worst for both the air quality of the environment and for the life of humans, animals and plants as well. It is generally said that many types of pollutions can be avoided for the time being or one can save oneself from their hazards but if there is pollution in the air you don’t have any other option but to inhale it for your very survival. If we don’t breathe the polluted air obviously we won’t have this much resources and a luxurious lifestyle to keep an oxygen bag on our back all the time full of clean air to inhale clean air.

What are the air pollutants?

There are three types of air pollutants.

Criteria air pollutants: These pollutants can be regulated with mitigation efforts and are the basic standard to evaluate the quality of air. Most important of them are carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, particles and sulfur dioxide.

Air toxics: These are the hazardous gases found in air in low concentration but are persistent enough to harm the environment and negatively impact the human, animal and plant life. Most of the air toxics are the result of motor vehicle emissions, solid fuel combustion, industrial emissions, and materials such as paints and adhesives in new buildings. Main hazardous gases under this category are: benzene, toluene, xylenes, formaldehyde and polyaromatic hydrocarbons.

Biological air pollutants: These pollutants are the outcome of the human activities. These are mostly produced by microbiological contamination like life remains of living beings including humans, animals and mainly insects which contaminate the air with emissions of smell and bacteria.

What are the sources of the air pollution?

The main sources of air pollution are:

Silencer of vehicles: One of the deadliest gases which comes out of the silencer of the vehicle is carbon mono oxide which is a slow poison if persists in the air for a long time. It is said that in a closed room if .05 per cent carbon mono oxide is present in the overall air of that room the living being staying there may die very shortly.

Another emission is hydrocarbon which is not harmful in itself but if react with sunlight may convert into myriad of harmful chemicals causing various respiratory diseases. Two other gases in vehicular emissions are oxides of nitrogen and oxides of sulphur both have potential to bring on various diseases pertaining to air, nose, eyes and throat.

If adulterated fuel is used in vehicles as is being done in most of the developing countries the situation becomes more alarming. Vehicles with adulterated fuel also emit lead which if inhaled by human folk mixes in their blood and cause various serious and lethal diseases related to heart and brain.

Chimney of industries: Industries emit various types of gases which vary from industry to industry depending upon the nature of their manufacturing process. Most dangerous of them is methane which already played havoc once in an Indian city Bhopal where an industry accidentally emitted large amount of methane owing to lack of environment and safety standards causing thousands of deaths and leaving thousands of thousands physically and mentally impaired. Its causes can still be observed there where you can find so many people with scars on skin and other physical disorders.

Coal-fired power plants are one of the biggest sources of air pollution all around the world because they emit carbon dioxide in huge quantity far beyond the permissible limits.

Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), ozone, and fluorinated gases (hydrofluorocarbons [HFCs], perfluorocarbons [PFCs], and sulfur hexafluoride [SF6]) are major green house gases (GHG) which trap temperature in atmosphere. Their emissions by industries in excess quantity cause climate change which depletes our natural resources most importantly our precious glaciers.

What are the effects of the air pollution?

The effects of air pollution are horrendous.

• It aggravates respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.
• It severely impacts the functioning of lungs to breathe properly.
• It weakens our respiratory system with high vulnerability.
• It not only affects our nervous system but also lowers our IQ level.
• It causes cancer and premature death.

How to control the air pollution?

All of us have to play our role to control the air pollution. Pointing fingers at each other is so easy but the need of the hour is to control this menace at its source to hand over this world to our kids with an air quality not harmful for their breathing.

Role of the government: There are two pipes if regulated properly may help mitigate air pollution. One is the silencer of the vehicle and the other one is the chimney of the factory. Both can be regulated through green laws of every country and government can play an effective role to implement these laws properly. For this purpose all the governments have to admit that there is no alternate to control the air pollution if we really want to save the air quality from further degradation. 

Role of the communities: Communities have stronger role to play for this cause because whatever they would do, it would be purely voluntary and on the call of their conscience. Vehicle owners should maintain their vehicles properly and keep its silencer without any flaw to emit less. Similarly industrialists should adopt a proper environment, health and safety plan in their industries to keep their emissions within permissible limits. 

Environment and Pollution

Environment supports life and pollution does so death. In early seventies a few people of each nation were worry about environmental degradation because machine had not dominated the activities of life those days and it done so today. Half of the work which is being done by machines now was done manually in those golden times when ethical values and social life was enviable and everything was not mechanical. Care, love, sympathy was in abundance those days. But thanks to greed for wealth that today we have to search the human feelings from the mechanical process of the life. In this process our environment has also been severely hit by pollution the most deadly outcome of our rampant progress and development in every field.

Technologically most parts of the world are so civilized in present times but ethically and morally we are bankrupt. We are losing natural beauty of the environment but simultaneously are very proud of our achievements in science and technology. Isn’t it counterproductive that our every achievement is being offset by the hazards of pollution impacting our life and well being? Why do humans work day and night to spend a happy life without diseases and natural stress or a life full of machines but devoid of any kind of true rejoicing?

About Pollution

Have you ever seen a person in your whole life talking in favour of pollution or outright opposing the pollution control that is done for the cause of better environment? Even did you ever hear or watch a person who damn care the menace of pollution.

We all very vehemently talk against pollution, express grave concerns on its rise, strongly demand for its abatement, slam our leaders on not saving our environment but practically what we do. Maximum we give a meagre amount for the cause of pollution control to a green outfit or join a walk that too once in a year or watch a talk show on hazards of pollution where two or three so-called champions of environment beat about the bush and wind up the debate with lot of hollow pledges. In our daily life how much change we observe in our individual and collective behaviours regarding the protection of environment from the menace of pollution. In backward countries there is no change in both the behaviours and in developed countries individually there is lot of sense of responsibility in people but collectively environment is yet to get place in priority list of the most of the rich countries.

Effects of pollution

What is the world’s deadliest slow poison? Is it a drug, herb or any chemical? No, not all of them! The menace of pollution is the world’s deadliest and massive slow poison that is killing human beings, animals and plants by and by even it is not noticed by the saner elements. Pollution the unwanted introduction of various contaminants in to the various types of environment has played havoc with life and environment both.

It is not an exaggeration when we listen or read somewhere that millions of deaths occur all around the world due to various types of pollution. Under very conservative estimates nearly fifty percent deaths per year world over occur due to the harmful effects of pollution which take the life very slowly.

Biological effects of the pollution

It is widely said that environment is life and pollution is death. It is absolutely right. Wherever there is modicum of pollution the spread of diseases are obvious there. Some of the pollution-caused diseases are so fatal which ultimately lead to the human beings to the deep trench of the death.
You may also read my article Climate Change Whores

Effects of the air pollution on human life

·         It weakens the lungs to function well

·         It causes irritation of eyes, nose, mouth and throat

·         It brings on asthma attacks

·         It causes respiratory symptoms such as coughing and wheezing

·         It increases the chances of respiratory diseases such as bronchitis

·         It reduces the energy levels

·         It is the main reason of headaches and dizziness

·         It causes disruption of endocrine, reproductive and immune systems

·         It is the cause of neuro behavioral disorders

·         It creates cardiovascular problems

·         It may cause cancer due to presence of carcinogenic contents in it

·         It causes premature death

What is water pollution?

What is water pollution? Its answer is so simple. When water loses its natural composition owing to encroachment of any unwanted compound into it then it does not remain as pure water and called the polluted water. This situation in the water is widely termed as the water pollution which literally means the poor quality of water.

Water pollution has become global issue. Wherever there is water, pollutants are contaminating it in one way or on another and are causing water pollution. On the two-third part of this planet there is water and rest of the one-third comprises of the land. It means the water pollutants are so huge in size and so harmful in effects that they are damaging the natural features of huge amount of water available in the world and depriving us of the opportunity to consume the pollution-free water.

All the sources of the water including oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, ponds, canals, streams etc are the worst hit of water pollution. The question arises here; who is polluting the water? Unfortunately we all human beings are contributing in one way or other, knowingly or unknowingly in polluting the water. It means all the human activities and their impacts are causing water pollution all across the globe.

A few decades ago there was no any serious threat of water pollution and as intense as it is nowadays. No doubt there was the problem of water contamination during older times but it was quite nominal. Thanks to the rapid industrialization and the urbanization all over the world which unleashed the menace of the water pollution. Does it mean the development is responsible for this havoc? Not at all; the unplanned and the disorganized development is the main cause of the all types of the pollution all around the world.

Types of water pollution

Technically speaking there are two main types of the water pollution.

Surface water pollution

The surface water is the entire amount of the water found in oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, stream etc. It may be further bifurcated into various categories according to its various other features like taste, place of storage etc. So wherever there is any sort of the contamination in the surface water it is called the surface water

Oil Pollution

Can oil be polluted? Are you thinking about this? Oil can be contaminated or adulterated but can’t be polluted. Any kind of liquid may not have as harmful effects as that of oil and the most harmful is its ability to put on fire. Then what is oil pollution. It is actually a wrong wording generally used for oil spills which means unwanted flow of oil into the water or land. But generally it is called oil pollution so for the convenience of the readers better to use the same term.

Oil pollution means spilling of the liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment more particularly into the marine environment. Oil in huge quantity is mostly transported trans-border through sea routes while its transportation within a country is done through a land route. Therefore, most of the oil pollution is occurred in sea water. Large vessels transport oil in big quantity from country to country and sometimes tanks lying over them leak and release a large quantity of oil directly into the sea. The leakages in fuel tanks of ship also cause oil pollution.

Other causes of oil pollution are rare. Like if a refinery is situated near the coastal area and releases the unwanted and bad quality oil directly into the sea causing oil pollution. It may happen in countries where there are no stringent laws to control flow of industrial effluents directly into the sea and other water bodies. Similarly boats which run on petrol or diesel mostly of fishermen folk also release the oil or diesel into the sea because of seepages into their fuel tank while moving on water.

Pollutants

Who amongst us is fully aware of devastation of pollutants. We all directly or indirectly keep falling prey to pollutants in one way or another. Unfortunately most of us are not aware of them and simply know about pollution and not about the pollutants. The root cause of every type of pollution is its pollutants which usually are more than many and keep damaging our environment and eventually make our lives more miserable.

Types of pollutants

The pollutants are all types of substances which cause any kind of pollution. Various gases are pollutants of air pollution, so many poisonous chemicals create land pollution and many elements and compounds bring on water pollution. They may be physical, chemical or both. These may be in all the three forms of matter; gas, liquid and solid. All the products of waste or their by-products are pollutants.

Most of the times a balanced quantity of various substance is good for nature but their excess or shortage may convert them into pollutants. Like soil needs a good balance of phosphate and nitrates to maintain fertility but their excess is harmful for its fertility and also cause water pollution especially in ground water.