5.1. Pollution and planetary destruction
Pollution is portrayed at several levels of the biosphere. We
do experience it in air, water and even in the soil. The deterioration of the
ozone layer leads to global warming which endangers life on the planet earth
and leads to planetary destruction.
5.1.1. Air pollution
Air Pollution, is the addition of harmful substances to the
atmosphere resulting in damage to the environment, human health, and quality of
life. One of many forms of pollution, air pollution, occurs inside homes,
schools, and offices, in cities, across continents, and even globally. Air
pollution makes people sick, it causes breathing problems and promotes cancer
and it harms plants, animals, and the ecosystems in which they live. Some air
pollutants return to Earth in the form of acid rains, which corrode statues and
buildings, damage crops and forests, and make lakes and streams unsuitable for
fish and other plant and animal life.
Pollution is changing the Earth's atmosphere so that it lets
in more harmful radiation from the Sun. At the same time, our polluted
atmosphere is becoming a better insulator, preventing heat from escaping back
into space and leading to a rise in global average temperatures. Scientists
predict that the temperature increase, referred to as "global warming", will
affect world food supply, alter sea levels, make the weather more extreme, and
increase the spread of tropical diseases.
5.1.2. Water pollution
If the human body is made up of about two-thirds water, our
planet has about seventy per cent of it, which establishes the fact that water
constitutes a major portion in both body masses. And that is what is alarming.
If seventy per cent of the earth's surface is made up of water, then humankind
should have been very wary of anything that would pollute this major portion of
the planet. Alas, the human race has done
97 otherwise. Water pollution is now a global problem. Today,
water pollution is rampant and the chief source of water pollution is the human
race. We are the very ones that need water most and, yet, we have polluted it,
even to the brink of extinction. Muriel GRIMALDI and Patrick CHAPELLE describe
this sorrowful situation in the following words:
D[La pollution] est universelle et multiforme.
Depuis toujours l'humanite s'est debarrassee de la plupart de ses dechets en
les confiant au sol et et l'eau. Mais les progres recents en matiere d'intrants
agricoles (engrais, pesticides) et de genie chimique ont mis en circulation des
millions de tonnes de produits toxiques qui finissent par s'accumuler dans les
reserves d'eau. »1
There are many types of water pollutants but these can be
segregated into four classifications: natural, agricultural, municipal and
industrial pollutants. Natural water pollutants could include all the natural
phenomena that happen from time to time such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes
that cause major upheavals in the ocean floor and storms that cause
flashfloods. Even global warming could be qualified as a cause of water
pollution.
Agricultural pollution consists mainly of poultry and other
agricultural animal wastes that are carelessly thrown off to bodies of water
near farms. It could also be the fertilizers or pesticides that are used to
make better crops, which erode into lakes, rivers or streams. Municipal wastes
are those that come from residential areas. This is the liquid waste that
households throw into bodies of water. Industrial pollution consists of all the
wastes that major industrial firms chuck into the waters. This last
classification is the most severe and most rampant among the three - and it is
also the one that has
I Muriel Grimaldi and Patrick Chapelle,
Apocalypse, mode d'emploi, Paris, I993, p. 28. [Pollution] is universal
and multiform. Ever since, humanity has done away with its dirt by throwing
them on the ground and in the waters. But recent advances in agricultural
products (manure and pesticides) and of chemical ingenuity have brought about
billions of tones of toxic products which end up by being accumulated in
waters.
caused the most damage. Industrial waste could include
contaminants that are hard to take off from the waters once they spread
petroleum from oil spills or nuclear wastes.
The bodies of water in the world are in catastrophic danger
with what all the industries in the world today, plus our individual wastes all
put together. No wonder mankind now drinks from bottles instead of just
scooping water from running streams. The effects of water pollution to humanity
are staggering. But we should also consider all the other life forms that
suffer: the fishes and other animals such as birds, and plants. It is only left
to us to imagine just what happens when humans eat the very fishes that live in
polluted waters.
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