The Effects Of Pollution On The Environment And Our Health
...and Our Health
Pollutants are substances or forms of energy which cause environmental changes in addition to those related with natural background variation. A commonly-used account of pollution stresses its anthropogenic (human-made) nature: the introduction by humans into the environment of substances or energy which may outcome in hazards to human health, harm to living resources as well as ecological systems, damage to structures or amenity, or interference with the lawful use of the environment. Pollution may occur when the waste products of human activities are released into the environment at a point (e.g. a sewage outfall pipe), along a line (e.g. a road), or over a particular area (e.g. a landfill site used for domestic waste). Pollution effects the air, the water and the land that we live on as well as our health, but there are ways to reduce the amount of pollution we release into the air as well as its harmful effects to the environment and our health.
The range of pollutants usually produced by urban activities is huge, and includes forms of energy (for example, excess heat, noise and radioactivity) and substances. A confusing 'cocktail' of organic and inorganic materials is incessantly emitted to air, water and soil through routine urban living. These materials may react with each other or with natural constituents in the environment to make yet more, secondary, pollutants. Ample of technical expertise is needed to untie the significance and effects of individual pollutants or pollutants acting in combination. Though, specialist knowledge is not needed to appreciate the sources and consequences of pollutants in the environment.
In fact, several pollutants are readily transferred between air, water and land thanks to precipitation, dry deposition from the atmosphere to land and water, gas exchanges between the atmosphere and water bodies, and...
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