Entries
Sunday, 6 May 2007
Environmental Post: PollutionPollution is everywhere, as long as industrialization and advancement exist in any part of the world. This is due to the explosive growth of the global economy which threatens the natural systems that sustain life on Earth. Despite some significant successes in reducing industrial pollution and increasing efficiency, globalization is devastating natural habitats, speeding global warming, and increasing air and water pollution. Hence, the issues of pollution as an indication of the effect of globalization will be discussed in this post.
As we all know, pollution is a topic which covers a very large area, and the main groups are: air pollution, water pollution and land pollution, and some of the most concerned effects of pollutions by people are depicted in the cartoons below:
Water Pollution:
http://www.starfish.govt.nz/science/facts/fact-pacific-traditions.htmAir and Water pollution:
http://www.grinningplanet.com/2006/12-05/water-cartoon.htmWater, Air and Land Pollution:
Air and Land pollution:
http://www.hagencartoons.com/cartoons_506_510.htmlIn an article, “Asian air pollution can reach U.S., study says” by Lisa Stiffler, Seattle Post-intelligencer Reporter, it was commented that
Along with toys, clothes and electronics, air pollution is being exported from Asia to the West Coast in amounts that could be harmful to people and the environment, according to research presented yesterday by scientists in Seattle.
In Asia, carbon monoxide, tiny bits of toxic materials, dust and ozone are drawn high into the atmosphere and whisked around the globe. The plumes of pollution are frequently detected by ground monitors in the Northwest and by airplanes. About once a year, enough is carried over to potentially be problematic.
"Does it really matter for air quality over here?" asked Daniel Jaffe, an environmental science professor at the University of Washington's Bothell campus. "It does, sometimes."
Jaffe presented his research on airborne pollution at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, which runs until Monday.
The concern is that when local air quality is bad, an influx of pollution from overseas can nudge the amount over levels set to protect human health.
Interest in this area of research has increased in the last few years as equipment has improved, allowing for more sensitive detection, scientists said.
"Global-scale pollution is something we now know happens in many, many places," Jaffe said. "The scientific community is starting to understand ... that pollutants can get mixed around."
Large-scale events that spread pollution, such as last summer's forest fires in Siberia and the April 2001 windstorms in Mongolia's Gobi Desert, have piqued the interest of researchers and health officials.
The fires raised the levels of ozone in Western Washington beyond federal limits. Ozone can cause breathing difficulty, coughing and throat irritation, plus trigger asthma attacks.
The windstorm increased nationwide the amount of fine particles in the air. The dust particles can bind with minute bits of toxic substances, researchers said.
"They get lodged in your lungs and stay there, and the pollutants they carry along with them get lodged in your lungs," said David Parrish, a research chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colo., who also presented work.
"It's not fundamentally that different from cigarette smoke," Jaffe said.
A couple of years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency enlisted Jaffe to investigate the contribution of airborne mercury in fish contamination.
But air pollution remains largely a local problem, regional air-quality officials said.
Occasionally, pollution from overseas is cause for concern, said Alice Collingwood, a spokeswoman for the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency. But, she added, "It's not a major continuing source of pollution in our region.
"It's really still just about us."
From this article, we can see that air pollution is able to be transferred from one country to another even though the neighboring countries are not involved in the process of producing the pollution. We can tell from the article that industrial pollution from the haze and “black smoke” produced from factories has resulted in environmental degradation in several countries, and this might be due to the lack of concern within countries about environmental problems produced as development occurs.
This is believed to be a similar case in the Indonesian’s slash and burn workers who burn down trees in forests to create more land for industrialization and advancement to take place. As we know, the haze and pollutants from Indonesia does not stay stationary in the country, but will be brought to the neighboring countries such as Singapore and Malaysia. Hence the transboundary air pollution will affect the environment, ecosystem (animals and plants) and people in the countries.
The main concern of the pollution is that it not only affects the environment, but also the health of people and animals in the countries affected. It has been a fact that cases of breathing problems and lung-related illnesses will rise as air pollution gets more severe in countries.
This is similar to water pollution. Water is an essential need in human as it ensures the health of people and is often used in our daily activities. However, due to problems of oil leakages from oil tanks, sewages, industrial wastewater, and many more, water pollution has occurred in several countries, and is spread worldwide due to the movement of water from one place to another.
This resulted in the lack of access in usable water in poor countries and result in deaths and illnesses, especially in children. Some of the frequent diseases related to poor water supply and sanitation are: Diarrhoea, Intestinal worms, Trachoma, Schistosomiasis, and Cholera. They are world-wide health problems occurred due to the consumption of contaminated water, or water which are not suitable for human use. In the case of diarrhea, it was stated that about four billion cases of it per year has caused about 2.2 million death, and for Trachoma, which is a disease caused by the lack of water combined with poor hygiene practices, it has caused about six million people to be blind from it.
Fortunately, people has finally realized that their human activities have been harming the environment, and in another way, themselves (the pollutants result in diseases and illnesses). Sustainable development, which is the integration of environmental protection work and human and technological advancement, has then been established world-wide so as to ensure that human society is still living in harmony with Earth, gaining a firmer footing which is both better for mankind and less harmful to our environment. Several rules and regulations have been established in different countries, and a large range of precautions and devises have been produced to ensure that the resulted pollution in the society is at its minimum.
From
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/inlwater/kf/iwkf11.htm:
Water pollution incidents: 1993-2005
England and Wales
*Category 1 and category 2 pollution incidents have the most serious impact on river water quality. The other two categories are for those incidents that are relatively minor or have no impact.
One of the examples which show that sustainable development has succeeded and that pollution to society has decreased is shown from the above. As we can see from the graph, the number of category 1 and 2 incidents from agriculture decreased from 115 in 2004 to 112 in 2005, while the number of incidents from the sewage and water industry rose from 137 to 157. In 1998 the number of prosecutions for water pollution fell to a third of the 1993 prosecutions. Since 1998 prosecutions have risen to 231 in 2005, only a fifth lower than 1993. Generally, there is a huge decrease in water pollution in England and Wales since 1993 till 2005, as inferred from the graph.
However, despite some success in reducing the amount of pollution in some countries, pollution is still increasing in most of the countries. Hence, in today’s modern world, pollution, which is still a problem to all countries globally, is one of the negative impacts of globalization in the world. But it is believed that global environmental standards and performance-based environmental protection have the potential to create a win-win situation by making corporations more efficient, reducing pollution, and protecting the public interest.
RONG QI Signing Off...
- because there's really no need to, anymore...
6:48:00 pm
