Margaret Fishero. Sarah Owens. English 12 Honors Dual Credit.

Despite growing awareness of the importance of a healthy environment and successes in pollution reduction, even a cursory summary shows that things have mostly gone from bad to worse worldwide. Let’s look at the problems by category.

In the essay “ The Harmful Effects of Ocean Pollution” by Clair Christofersen they state, “ Records show that 850 million meters cubed of liquid and solid wastes have been dumped into the ocean in the past 85 years. Not only does our population toss these solid wastes into

Pollution is defined as the process of harmful substances being released into the air. Some of these substances include Carbon Monoxide, Sulphur dioxide, Lead and PM2.5. PM2.5 is small particles which are smaller than 25 thousandths of a millimeter. This polluted air will fill your lungs with tiny particles and cause Lung cancer, Asthma and other heart and lung diseases.

Pollution is a common place everywhere in the world, the phrase is used for many global issues in various forms. Air pollution is a change in the stratosphere which causes adaption to the air, physical, biological, and chemical gasses. This happens when pollutants released into the air which comes in many different forms such as; gases, smoke, and dusts. The process leads to difficulty for the natural air to breathe because it is contaminated as there are two various forms of air pollution; visible air pollution and invisible air pollution. Some causes and effects of air pollution are; burning of fossil fuels, mining operations, indoor air pollution, agriculture activities, global warming, acid rain, and depletion of Ozone layer to name a few. Air pollution is linked to many health related issues. One location I focused my study on was the health of the Chippewa people in Sarnia Ontario and the documentary film “Toxic Trespass”.

Oil spills into rivers, bays, and the ocean most often are caused by accidents involving tankers, barges, pipelines, refineries, drilling rigs, and storage facilities. Spills can be caused by people making mistakes or being careless, equipment breaking down, hurricanes, deliberate acts by terrorists,

This one’s a given. Whenever a tanker springs a leak in rough seas or an oil rig has a faulty valve, a media frenzy soon follows. Images of black goop covering large swaths of ocean and washing up on once-pristine beaches can seem apocalyptic. However, according to WWF, while oil spills do cause huge damage to the environment, they are only responsible for 12% of the oil entering the ocean each year. A much larger proportion actually comes from our cities, through untreated sewage, polluted rivers, and surface runoff.

WRI Between 4 to 6 million tons of oil are discharged into the oceans every year"

Pollution is a serious global issue that has been occurring for as long as humans have inhabited the planet. There are many different varieties of pollution, as well as an abundance of materials, both natural and synthetic, that the earth has been contaiminated with. Shifrin ( 2005), states: “To date, wastes remain a fact of life and there are only three places to dispose of wastes-air, water, or land. Waste management always involves tradeoffs.” (p. 676). Even though Shifrin is correct in his analysis, it does not excuse the amount of environmental poison that continues to exist today, nor the amount of environmental problems that it has caused throughout history. The “tradeoffs” of pollution have devastated entire communities, causing waves of sickness and death in their wake. According to Shifrin (2005):” Water-borne contagious disease still caused devastating epidemics in the early 1900s, compounded by growing, congested populations. Air pollution also grew to a high priority by midcentury because its impact was so observable and immediate.” (p. 676). Generally, these diseases were spread through poor sanitary practices as well as the overwhelming volume of pollution that was generated by so many indivduals with little knowledge about what the adverse effects on the overall environment would be.

For example, “in 2014 750 barrels of crude oil was leaked into the Lower Mississippi River because a tanker ran into a towboat”. In addition, and unfortunately very common, oil spills are created through machine malfunction or explosion. This is what happened in the BP Deepwater oil spill. “An explosion damaged one of the rigs and they completely lost all ability to control the rig. The fire burned for over 36 hours until the rig sank” (NOAA.GOV). Oil spills can also be natural. On the California coast there are natural oil seeps which release up to “3,000 gallons of crude oil” every day. According to “hydrocarbons leak out of the ground through fractures and sediments, in the same way freshwater springs bring water to the surface” (Live Science Staff).

Pollution is a very vast issue. It is a problem that nations across the world struggle with. The power of pollution is caused by technology, culture, and location. Pollution is harmful to us and wildlife. It is in the air we breath, the water we drink and even the soil we use for our crops. Pollution causes environmental degradation, bad human health, and Global Warming. The most common air pollution is smog and it is caused by carbon dioxide, also known as a greenhouse gas. This is a growing problem because the Earth is slowly deteriorating from pollution. If something doesn’t change now, it’s only going to get worse. Pollution is so vigorous because of the massive effect it has on the World.

Pollution is one way to negatively impact the Earth, but what is pollution? Defined literally it is the presence or introduction of a substance that has harmful or poisonous effects. The main types of pollution are air, water, land,

Where does most of the oil pollution in the oceans come from? Most would answer from oil spillages such as the most recent BP’s but actually it happens naturally. Crude oil reservoirs natural seep oil into the ocean. This oil, naturally emitted, hurts wildlife such as fish and birds, and not to mention, marsh grass and other plants. When oil gets onto a bird it makes its feathers stick to itself and causes this bird to not be able to fly, which in turn it is not able to retrieve its own food, which will lead to its death. Just another reason gasoline is bad.

The modern 21st century has blessed the human race with the increasing trend of industrialization. The industrialization has gifted human beings with uncountable facilities and privileges. Yet, there are certain aspects which do not go in favor of human beings and are detrimental to the overall society. Among these unfavorable points, environmental pollution is the biggest issue (Newbold, 2010). Keeping in view the criticality of this issue and need of clean and healthy

How bad does it feel when you throw a cup on the ground after you are done with it? Or even eat a fast food sandwich and then throw the wrapper out of the car window when you are finished? In the moment it doesn’t faze many but in the long run it will affect us all and the world we live in today. Throughout our everyday lives as human beings we do many things that may hurt others or the environment and don’t even realize it, solely because it isn’t hurting us in the moment or effecting our daily routines. Things happen to be this way because some of us are oblivious to certain problems our world is facing mainly because the worst of it all hasn’t happened yet. When thinking about the environment and the effects we have on it one of the first things that comes to mind, is the impact we have on the pollution because we can’t blame anybody but ourselves. Pollution is such a huge problem throughout the world and it needs to be stopped immediately before our planet goes extinct. Did you know that by the middle of this century there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish if people continue to pollute the seas? Or that each year 1.2 trillion gallons of untreated sewage, storm water and industrial waste are dumped into America’s water? There are many reasons why pollution should be stopped and we as a population cannot continue to live in some of the conditions we live in because

Pollution is a serious global issue that has occurred for as long as humans have inhabited the planet. There are several different varieties of pollution, as well as an abundance of materials, both natural and synthetic, that the earth is contaminated with. Shifrin (2005) states: “To date, wastes remain a fact of life and there are only three places to dispose of wastes-air, water, or land. Waste management always involves tradeoffs” (p. 676). Even though Shifrin is correct in his analysis, it does not excuse the amount of environmental poison that continues to exist today, nor the amount of environmental problems that it has caused throughout history. The “tradeoffs” of pollution have devastated entire communities, causing waves of