Pollution of land, water and air is greatly harming our environment and the earth is being affected by our pollution. Pollution is the contamination of our environment especially by our activities and manmade wastes. Human beings engage in activities that destroy the purity of our environment. These activities not only affect our lives but also of other living things such as plants and animals that we share the same environment. The environment is composed of three living parts; air, land and water. These are the parts that are affected by pollution. This paper discusses how pollution is harming our environment, especially air, land and water, and how earth is badly being affected by our pollutions at large.
Air Pollution
Animals and plants cannot survive without air. Air is a mixture of gases that are essential to all living things. Air pollution is caused by harmful and poisonous substances that are released or found in the air, rivers, plants, animals and even our own bodies. Air pollution is responsible for diseases such as asthma. Air pollution is caused by exhaust fumes and industrial smoke. Exhaust fumes are mainly from vehicles. Carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, oil vapor and lead contained in petrol fumes are all potentially dangerous to human health. Lead free petrol can be used in cars with catalytic converters, which remove the polluting gases. Industrial smoke is produced by burning fuels such as coal releasing smoke. This smoke contains sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, tar and carbon particles . In the past century, most of the air pollution is as a result of power stations. This can be reduced by using renewable energy.
Burning fossil fuels is the major cause of atmospheric pollution. Mostly, carbon dioxide is the cause of atmospheric pollution and is the cause of global warming. When the oceans absorb solar radiations from the sun, they heat up increasing the temperature. The atmosphere also heats up due to pollution. As the temperatures of the earth rises, polar caps meltdown causing the sea levels to rise. Solar radiations get trapped in the troposphere due to increased air pollution. This can be easily described by the greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide is the largest in abundance of the greenhouse gases. Other gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect include methane produced from animal waste and nitrous oxide from combustion of fossil fuels.
Atmospheric pollution causes climatic changes that in turn lead to droughts, heavy rain cycles and long extreme heat waves. These factors affect crop production due to drought and heavy rains. People in colder climates experience heat injuries when there are extremely long heat waves. Due to the rising of the ocean, some places that are initially dry will become wetlands and this will force animals and human beings to migrate. The plants will die and new ones that can survive the new environment grow. Polar bears, ring seals and whales are already experiencing stress due to the melting of ice caps.
Human beings are the main causes of these negative impacts on the environment. The high increase in carbon dioxide is solemnly a responsibility of human beings. The level of carbon dioxide has increased by more than 100 parts per million since the beginning of industrialization. Trees, which help in eliminating carbon dioxide while increasing oxygen to the environment, are being cut down by human beings. These trees are then burned and used as fuel producing more carbon dioxide to the environment. Another effect of atmospheric pollution is acid rains. This rain pollutes water by affecting their acidity and destroys habitats of many animals, and this will cause damage to most of the ecosystems. Some chemicals can also shrink the ozone layer making it thinner thereby, opening the door for ultraviolet rays that are the major causes of skin cancer.
Soil Pollution
Plants that provide food for human beings and animals are grown on soil hence; the growth and health of these plants need good soil conditions. Soil that is in good condition should have water, mineral salts, air, population of living organisms (such as bacteria, insects and worms) and humus (remains of plants and animals that are decaying).
Soil is an ecosystem unit which is relatively sensitive to any foreign matter that is added to it. The major potential causes of soil pollution include industrial waste, lead contamination, radioactive metals, leaking underground fuel tanks, agricultural chemicals, litter, fertilizers, pesticides, sewage and poor disposal of hazardous materials. Each of these sources causes harmful environmental effects.
The main source of soil pollution is the fertilizers that are added to the soil to increase crop yields. These fertilizers promote the growth of algae and other harmful plants increasing the microbe levels and reducing the oxygen content of the soil.
Irrigation in arid and semi arid areas is another cause of soil pollution. This irrigation causes building of salts in the soil eventually, making it unable to grow most crops. Removing salt from the soil is impossible hence accumulation of salt makes the land useless after some time. Soil pollutants eventually find their way into ground water.
Radioactive metals such as plutonium and radium pollute the soil either naturally or through human activities. Due to mining and industrial activities, heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury and chromium rise to dangerous concentrations. This metals increase soil infertility and some of them like arsenic and lead are poisonous to both people and animals.
Soil pollution causes diseases such as leukemia, headaches, nausea, fatigue, skin rash and eye irritation. High concentration of mercury in the soil can cause kidney damage. Cyclodienes cause liver toxicity and this can lead to neuromuscular blockage and depression of the central nervous system. Soil pollution can also result from secondary contamination of water supplies and air. Crops that are grown on contaminated soils also become contaminated reducing food security.
Sound pollution
Noise is undesirable sounds that result from human activities. Noise pollution is as a result of a lot of noise in the environment. Sources of noise pollution include traffic noise from vehicles, noise from industrial machines such as motors, noise from construction sites and others. Noise causes mental health deterioration. For example, people residing near airports are quite jumpy. Continuous noise increases frustration levels and can create panic. This noise can also cause deterioration of the ability to hear things clearly. Managing noise pollution is very important because it has as many effects on the environment as the other forms of pollution.
Water pollution:
About two thirds of our planet earth is covered with sea water and other numerous fresh water habits. All living things depend on water for survival. Pollution of water is majorly caused by chemicals such as pesticides and herbicides that are sprayed on fields. These chemicals are washed off by rain into rivers and streams. These chemicals cannot be broken down by bacteria that usually breaks animal and plant waste. This causes imbalance of life as these chemicals will find their way into plants and human bodies. Phosphates from domestic washing powders combined with artificial fertilizers containing nitrates and phosphates can also be washed into river bodies.
Effects of water pollution can be divided into; biological, pathogenic, toxic and physic-chemical. Physic-chemical effects: pollutants that are released into water can cause change its color, odors and tastes. The PH, temperatures and the oxygen contents are affected hence triggering chemical reaction, which leads to the formation of unwanted products. When organic matters are added into the waters it leads to depletion of oxygen hence increasing the amount of carbon dioxide, this leads to degradation of the bacteria. When nutrients are added directly, they enhance the growth of algae and other growths, which will eventually decompose and die leading to reduction of oxygen but instead lead to accumulation of other gases like ammonia which cause odors and other unaesthetic conditions. The photosynthesis of algae increases the PH levels of water this is because it consumes carbon dioxide and carbonates which gets precipitated as calcium carbonate . The effects of water pollution are discussed below.
- Biological effects:
Addition of pollutants ants causes the fauna and flora effects due to self regulating of the factors taking place in the aquatic systems. Fresh water algae are very sensitive to pollutants which eliminate them hence changing the prey-predator relationship, and it leads to breakdown of food chains. The foremost response of the addition of nutrients leads to the increase of the algae growth composed of obnoxious bloom, which forms green chlorophyceae algae forms. Most of the predicators don’t consume these blue-greens. The ecosystem may change to heterotrophic from autotrophic at the long run, and the accumulation of the organic matter leads to increase of the density of saprophytic organisms.
- Toxic effects:
They are caused by pollutants like biocides, heavy metals, cyanide and other inorganic material which have bad effects on organisms. When the substances increase they can make water unfit for consumption and for aquatic biota. These chemicals are very toxic to the aquatic animals and organisms. They accumulate in the bodies of these organism causing long term effects.
- Pathogenic effects:
Sewage and other wastes contain a lot of pathogenic and nonpathogenic microorganisms and viruses. Some of them like streptococcus faecalis and clostridium perfringens cause food poisoning. Diseases like cholera, colitis, infective hepatitis and even typhoid are caused by taking of sewage contaminated waters.
Water pollution also has an effect on fish. They are very sensitive when it comes to the pollutants released into the water. In natural systems like rivers, they have a chance to move to non-polluted areas if some portion of water is contaminated. Organic matter causes the oxygen in water to reduce hence causing the fish to lack the oxygen because fish have a specific requirement of oxygen. Fish can also be affected directly by the toxic pollutants. Ammonia has effects on fish too since it raises the PH of water. Pesticides, which are found in polluted water, depress the growth and production of different types of fish with time. Fishes are also sensitive to the detergents will are being released to the waters, these detergents can damage the gill epithelium of fish. Most fishes have problems with respiratory when they are in waters contaminated by heavy toxic metals.
Benthic organisms are also affected by water pollution. This bottom dwelling organisms including macro-invertebrates cannot be able to move away from contaminated waters, unlike fishes. Therefore, they are normally used as indicator organisms. When the waters are highly polluted the macro-invertebrates are usually eliminated, but some types like sludge worms, blood worms, rat-tailed, and sewage fly larvae dominated the area which is polluted. Some members like snail, clam, scud, and black fly larvae are not affected .
Pollution of the environment will reduce its productivity, increase global warming and rising oceans and seas, reduce life expectancy of human beings, increase rate of diseases and decrease in the beauty of the earth. This will endanger both the existence of living things and the earth itself. A lot of effort needs to be put so as to reduce pollution of the environment so that we can recover the earth.
Pollution has a lot of impact on the environmental, and for us to preserve our environment; guidelines should be adapted to control the different pollutants of the environment. This will improve our lives and those of other living things.
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