How does pollution affect animals?

Many animals are dying because of pollution. All types of environmental pollution have negative impact on animal's health, and the worst types of pollution are air, water and noise pollution. Even small levels of environmental pollution create discomfort for many animals while on the other hand more excessive pollution leads to diseases and deaths of animals.

Many people ignore the fact that our planet is now polluted more than ever before, and that many animals are dying because of it. They fail to see the importance of these animals, and underestimate the importance of biodiversity in general. Biodiversity is the key to human well being, and we should be definitely doing more to stop huge biodiversity loss that is also a serious threat to our own survival.

Air pollution is particularly dangerous to animals when in form of the acid rain. Acid rains kills fish in lakes and streams by increasing the acidity of water. Other forms of air pollution such as ozone are also harmful to animals, for instance ozone pollution can cause serious damage to lung tissues of many animals.

Water pollution has extremely negative impact on many animals. Water polluted with different chemicals can cause decline of population in some species (such as frog), while on the other hand water polluted with nutrients can lead to huge growth of toxic algae which when eaten by other animals may cause serious diseases and death to these animals.

Noise pollution is also becoming huge problem for many animals, especially animals that live in our oceans and seas. Because of the increased ship traffic and offshore oil drilling noise pollution has started affecting very large number of marine animals. Whales and dolphins are among animals most affected by noise pollution. This is because they use their sense of hearing for many purposes such as hunting for prey, navigation, migration and distinguishing the members of the same species and with so many artificial sounds in our oceans they are having tough time to distinguish them all.

Littering can also lead to death of many animals because of toxic substances in trash (for instance motor oil, detergents, pesticides) that once eaten by animals often lead to their deaths. Animals can also die by getting themselves entangled in many of the litter items people dump into our environment.

By reducing all forms of environmental pollution on our planet we could save millions of animals but sadly world is currently not doing enough, and pollution issue is therefore constantly growing in size. Add to this climate change and deforestation and you'll soon realize why so many animals are finding it very hard to survive.

Link: http://pollutionarticles.blogspot.in/2011/03/how-does-pollution-affect-animals.html

Littering - Definition and impact

In order to define the littering we need to define the litter first. The litter refers to different waste products such as containers, papers, and wrappers that have been disposed onto streets, countrysides and remote places, meaning that the simplest littering definition would be pollution of our environment by different litter waste.

Littering is much more serious problem than some think it is, not just environmental but also an economic problem too because countries spend huge sums of money to clean and remove litter out of our environment.

Not all litter gets taken care of in time, and wind often moves litter into rivers, streams and oceans, in fact some latest studies have concluded that up to 20% of litter ends up in different water bodies. For instance, about 80% of marine debris comes from land-based sources

Litter is also not a local problem as some think it is, because littering is happening worldwide. In US 75% of Americans admit to littering within the last 5 years, most of them being young people between age 20-35. Among people that litter the most are smokers, and cigarette butts are believed to be most commonly littered items.

Why do people litter? Is it because they are lazy and ignorant or is it because they do not care for our environment? Probably due to both of these reasons, and until people develop global ecological conscience littering will continue to harm our environment.

Littering is doing significant damage to our environment, not only from visual point of view, but it also harms plants and animals, and can also harm people because litter often contains germs that can lead to several diseases.

As said before global ecological conscience is the key to stop littering and this can be only achieved with adequate education. People need to learn how important our environment is, and not take everything for granted like everything is there just because of us.

Cleaning up litter in the U.S. currently costs about $11 billion per year.

Link: http://pollutionarticles.blogspot.in/2010/10/littering-definition-and-impact.html

Interesting facts about pollution on our planet

Americans use approximately 2.2 billion pounds of pesticides every year. Many of these pesticides are very harmful to environment. For instance more than 100 active pesticide ingredients are suspected of causing cancer, birth defects, and various other health problems.

46% of American lakes are too polluted for fishing, swimming, or aquatic life.

More than one third of China's Yellow River is not only safe for drinking but is also unsafe for industrial use (water pollution worse than level 5).

The main sources of pollution are definitely industry and vehicles. Country that is currently world's biggest polluter is China followed by United States.

China's annual CO2 Emissions were in 2007 6.01 billion tonnes of CO2 compared to US 5.90 billion tonnes. It has to also said that China has lot more people than US.

About 80 % of urban waste in India ends up in rivers which is the main reason behind India's water pollution problem.

Asian rivers are rivers most polluted in the world. They have three times as many bacteria from human waste as the global average. Of course these rivers are also responsible for many waterborne diseases. Some reports say that each year there are about 250 million cases of water-related diseases, with approximately 5 to 10 million deaths.

Approximately about 80% of the pollution in seas and oceans comes from land-based activities.

Less than 1% of the world's oceans, and only about 4% of coastal waters are protected which attributes to global ocean and sea pollution.

As long as world sticks with fossil fuels as dominant energy sources pollution is very likely to grow even further. Clean renewable energy would make excellent ally in fight against pollution.

Link: http://pollutionarticles.blogspot.in/2009/09/interesting-facts-about-pollution-of.html

Why is our planet so heavily polluted?

Do we really care about our planet? If we take a look at how much we're polluting our planet then answer is certainly no we don't. Pollution is taking heavy toll in many countries around the world, like our planet is some sort of dumping place where we can dump all our trash, not thinking how this is affecting not only our planet but ourselves. We seem to be forgetting all the time that Earth is still our only home, and that by polluting our planet we are really hurting ourselves.
Ever since the industrial revolution started people started dumping more and more garbage into our rivers, sea oceans, and different types of emissions have also created significant air pollutions in many countries across the world. Take China for instance, by reaching super fast economic boom China also experienced supper fast air and river pollution.

Pollution is not only hurting our planet, it is hurting us as well because pollution often leads to many diseases, for instance air pollution leads to respiratory diseases while river pollution can lead to poisoning. Pollution problem is present in many parts of the world but countries that are mostly affected are China and India.

China does not only have tremendous air pollution problem because of heavy coal-fired industry but it is also facing serious river pollution problem with its main rivers Yangtze and Yellow river. These rivers are no longer safe for normal use, and are leading to many waterborne diseases. Air pollution problem in China had really become famous because of Beijing Olympics when China's government made extreme efforts to clean the air as much as possible in such short time. Of course, now when this games are over, and once recession ends industry will yet again create even more air pollution. Despite this serious situation China's government is still deciding whether to go for stronger environmental policy that would ensure cleaner air in China. Why? Because then industry would suffer and China isn't ready to give up on its huge economic boom.

Condition in India is also more than worrying. It is enough to visit holy India's river Ganges and you'll realize right away what I'm talking about. This river is is some parts so heavily polluted that by looking at it you have the feeling like you're in some kind of nightmare. 300 million gallons of waste go into the Ganges river each day, and what is even worse this river is still consider in India as the symbol of spiritual purity. Some estimates say how one third of all deaths in India is the result of different waterborne diseases.

So then it's the industry the main factor responsible for pollution? Well the answer is both yes and no. Yes industry is creating extreme waste, but the question we should ask ourselves is who stands behind the industry? We, of course. We are the most responsible for pollution, our greedy nature and lack of ecological conscience. As long as world remains driven by high profits things will not change, and planet will remain heavily polluted. We can have adequate laws but what good is the law if nobody obeys it?

What we really need to do is change our current perspective where everything is oriented on money. Money is important but is definitely not more important than our planet, well at least it shouldn't be. We need to realize this as soon as possible because even almighty dollar won't mean nothing without the planet to spend it on.

Link: http://pollutionarticles.blogspot.in/2009/06/why-is-our-planet-so-heavily-polluted.html

Main sources of pollution and general health of our planet

Pollution is one of the biggest environmental problems but still many people do not take pollution problem seriously as they should be. Many people still think that we can dump our garbage all over the planet without any consequences which is not true. Since the start of industrial revolution we have been continuously heavily polluting our planet, caring only for economic development, and not caring at all for the health of environment we live in. Such lack of ecological conscience has caused severe pollution across the whole planet. Levels of air, sea, and water pollution are extremely high, and are constantly growing because industry isn’t letting go.

The main sources of pollution are definitely industry and vehicles. Heavy industries based on fossil fuels are especially dangerous for our environment, and if we take a look at China and India for instance we can see that rapid economic development actually has rather high environmental price. Heavy pollution not only makes our environment ugly but is also the source of many respiratory and water borne diseases across the south-east Asia that are taking many human lives year after year.

The world biggest polluter is China but United States. are not far behind. These two countries release majority of world’s total CO2 emissions into the atmosphere that not only causes pollution but also gives more impact to climate change problem. The main sources of pollution are dirty fuels such as coal that are releasing harmful gases and particles into our air and our atmosphere. Sadly air pollution is only one form of global pollution and there are many other forms of pollution happening on our planet.

People not only care little about the air they breathe but also about water they drink. Water is so precious to our survival and people are still doing so little to protect water resources around the globe. In many parts of the world, especially India and China, water is in some places well below the levels required for safe drinking, with many people dying from different waterborne diseases and lack of basic sanitation.

Our sea is also heavily polluted. Each day we are dumping new garbage into our oceans; luckily oceans are so huge that we are not able to see the actual damage that we are doing to them which is very likely much bigger than we think it is.

Link: http://pollutionarticles.blogspot.in/2009/07/main-sources-of-pollution-and-general.html