Welcome to Environmental Pollution Guide
Environmental Air Pollution Quotes From Scientists Article
. For a permanent link to this article, or to bookmark it for further reading, click here.
Environmental Pollution Kills One In Five
from:"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.
Environmental Air Pollution Quotes From Scientists Specific links
Environmental Air Pollution Quotes From Scientists News
Rutherford to get odour testing - The Maitland Mercury
Rutherford to get odour testing The Maitland Mercury Todoroski Air Sciences has been commissioned to design an odour sampling campaign for the Rutherford industrial area. NSW Environment Minister Robyn Parker made the announcement yesterday and said it was a significant step forward in the government's ... |
Clean Air, Clean Minds - OpEdNews
Clean Air, Clean Minds OpEdNews More importantly, the above quotes neglect the bigger picture of environmental destruction through deforestation, standardized cropping by industrial farms, the pollution of the waters and air, and dead zones in the ocean created by our actions. |
Economic report urges 'precautionary principle' to be applied to fracking - Leitrim Observer
Economic report urges 'precautionary principle' to be applied to fracking Leitrim Observer It quotes Junior Agriculture Minister Shane McEntee who said last July “There is an increasing recognition that our economic recovery will be export-led and, in that regard, agriculture and the agrifood sector has a particularly important part to play. |
Mills: NPR twists energy story to demonize Big Oil - Times Record News
Mills: NPR twists energy story to demonize Big Oil Times Record News NPR doesn't mention anything about Armendariz, nor does it mention that the "environmental consultant" that performed some air emission tests has been discredited as an expert witness. The story says Dish spent $15000 on an air quality study, ... |
Concerns about the health risks of fracking continue to grow - Natural Resources Defense Council (blog)
 Natural Resources Defense Council (blog) | Concerns about the health risks of fracking continue to grow Natural Resources Defense Council (blog) The article quotes an NRC senior scholar as saying that a major comprehensive study is needed across all NRC divisions because there are many issues that have not gotten careful scientific review from federal agencies. The Institute of Medicine, ... |