Cheyan Ichel C.

Fernandez
Environmental Science 7
1-14-15
7 B Environmentalist
JRLMHS
WATER POLLUTION
Water they say is life, and indeed they were right. With about 70% of the
earths cover being water, it undeniably becomes one of our greatest
resources. As young students, we learned about the various ways to
conserve water; coming to think of it, water is used in almost every
important human chores and processes. It is an important element in both
domestic as well as industrial purposes. However a closer inspection of our
water resources today ,give us a rude shock.
Infested with waste ranging from floating plastic bags to chemical waste,
our water bodies have turned into a pool of poison. The contamination of
water bodies in simplest words means water pollution. Thereby the abuse of
lakes, ponds, oceans, rivers, reservoirs etc. is water pollution. Pollution of
water occurs when substances that will modify the water in negative fashion
are discharged in it. This discharge of pollutants can be direct as well as
indirect.
Water pollution is an appalling problem, powerful enough to lead the world
on a path of destruction. Water is an easy solvent, enabling most pollutants
to dissolve in it easily and contaminate it. The most basic effect of water
pollution is directly suffered by the organisms and vegetation that survive in
water, including amphibians. On a human level, several people die each day
due to consumption of polluted and infected water.
As per the Economist report (dated 2008) each day over 1000 children die
of diarrheal sickness in India and the numbers have only increased alarming
in the last five years. Water is polluted by both natural as well as man-made
activities. Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, Tsunamis etc are known to alter
water and contaminate it, also affecting ecosystems that survive under
water.

WATER POLLUTION
Water pollutants also include both organic and inorganic factors. Organic
factors include volatile organic compounds, fuels, waste from trees, plants
etc. Inorganic factors include ammonia, chemical waste from factories,
discarded cosmetics etc. The water that travels via fields is usually
contaminated with all forms of waste inclusive of fertilizers that it swept
along the way. This infected water makes its way to our water bodies and
sometimes to the seas endangering the flora, fauna and humans that use it
along its path.
The current scenario has led to a consciousness about water preservation
and efforts are being made on several levels to redeem our water resources.
Industries and factory set-ups are restricted from contaminating the water
bodies and are advised to treat their contaminated waste through filtration
methods. People are investing in rain water harvesting projects to collect
rainwater and preserve it in wells below ground level.
Water Pollution is common, and is an area of high alert. Water needs to be
preserved and respected today, for us to live a tomorrow.

AIR POLLUTION
Its official: Breathing dirty air causes lung cancer.
The World Health Organization on Thursday declared air pollution a human
carcinogen like tobacco smoke, asbestos and arsenic, calling it a leading
cause of cancer deaths globally.
Health experts have known for years that air pollution increases the risk of a
wide range of ailments, including respiratory problems and heart disease.
Some compounds in the air we breathe, such as diesel exhaust, have
already been deemed cancer-causing.
But this is the first time the organizations International Agency for Research
on Cancer has classified air pollution in its entirety as a cause of cancer.
The complex mixture of gases, fine particles and other pollutants in the air
were labeled carcinogenic to humans, the highest of the agencys fourlevel classification system.
A panel of experts convened by the WHO's cancer research arm made the
finding after reviewing thousands of scientific papers.
We now know that outdoor air pollution is not only a major risk to health in
general, but also a leading environmental cause of cancer deaths, Kurt
Straif of the international cancer research agency said in a news release.

Air pollution also increases the risk of bladder cancer, the agency reported.
Experts also evaluated particulate matter, one the largest components of air
pollution, and classified it as a carcinogen.
While air pollution levels vary widely across the globe and have fallen in the
United States, exposure is on the rise in rapidly industrializing countries, the
agency's report notes.
Air pollution caused more than 220,000 lung cancer deaths worldwide in
2010, the agency reported; more than half of lung cancer deaths from
particulate matter were in China and East Asian countries.
The agencys report did not quantify the cancer risk to individuals or
countries.
That can be hard to pin down because the sources of air pollution are
widespread and ubiquitous, including vehicles with internal combustion
engines, power plants, factories and farms, according to the report. The
agency wanted to review air pollution globally to understand the role it
plays in the more than 1.3 million new cases of lung cancer recorded each
year.
Even a small contribution from air pollution to this number would
strengthen the justification for implementing tighter control measures, the
report says.

AIR POLLUTION
Two years ago researchers outfitted an electric Toyota RAV4 with a set of
test instruments and drove back and forth near four Los Angeles County
freeways between 4:30 a.m. and 6:30 a.m., sampling the air.
The results confirmed that in the early morning, concentrated plumes of air
pollution from freeways can travel more than a mile downwind, exposing
more residents than previously thought to harmful pollution levels.
Most previous air quality studies, based on measurements taken during the
day or evening, have found that vehicle emission plumes generally blow no
more than about 1,000 feet downwind from a major roadway before they
break up.

But in the hours just before sunrise, weather conditions are different.
Nocturnal surface inversions, caused by nighttime cooling, trap air near the
ground, slowing the dispersal of concentrated pollution particles and
allowing them to travel farther than during the day.
A 2009 study documented extended emission plumes near the 10 Freeway
in the early morning. To see whether the same thing was happening
elsewhere, researchers from UCLA and the California Air Resources Board in
2011 sampled the air in residential neighborhoods downwind of the 91
Freeway in Paramount, the 210 in Claremont, the 110 in Carson and the 101
in downtown Los Angeles.

LAND POLLUTION
Why does land pollution matter? Although Earth might seem a pretty big
place, only about a third of its surface is covered in land, and there are now
over seven billion people trying to survive here. Most of our energy (around
85 percent in the United States [10]) still comes from fossil fuels buried
under the ground and, since we haven't yet figured out how to mine in
space, so do all our minerals. Much of our food is grown on the surface of
the planet; the water we need comes from the planet's surface too or from
rocks buried just underground. In short, our lives are as intimately tied to
the surface of Earth as the plants that grow from the ground. Anything that

degrades, damages, or destroys the land ultimately has an impact on

human life and may threaten our very ability to survive. That's why we need
solutions to the problem.
What kind of solutions? Ideally, we'd look at every aspect of land pollution in
turn and try to find a way of either stopping it or reducing it. With problems
like waste disposal, solutions are relatively simple. We know that recycling
that can dramatically reduce the need for sending waste to landfills; it also
reduces the need for incineration, which can produce "fly ash" (toxic
airborne dust) that blows may miles until it falls back to land or water. We'll
always need mines but, again, recycling of old materials can reduce our
need for new ones. In some countries, it's now commonplace to require
mine operators to clean-up mines and restore the landscape after they've
finished working them; sometimes mine owners even have to file financial
bonds to ensure they have the money in place to do this. Greater interest in
organic food and farming might, one day, lead to a reduction in the use of
harmful agricultural chemicals, but that's unlikely to happen anytime soon.
Even so, public concerns about food and chemical safety have led to the
withdrawal of the more harmful pesticidesin some countries, at least.
Meanwhile, international efforts, such as the United Nations Convention to
Combat Desertification, are helping to focus attention on major problems
like soil erosion.

LAND POLLUTION

If you define "land pollution" as irreversible damage to the land, you have to
include soil erosion as a type of pollution too. Many people think soil is soil,
always there, never changing, ever ready to grow whatever crops we
choose to bury in it. In reality, soil is a much more complex growing habitat
that remains productive only when it is cared for and nurtured. Too much
wind or water, destruction of soil structure by excessive plowing, excessive
nutrients, overgrazing, and overproduction of crops erode soil, damaging its
structure and drastically reducing its productivity until it's little more than
dust. At its worst, soil erosion becomes desertification: once-productive
agricultural areas become barren, useless deserts. How serious is the
problem? In 2001, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warned the
world that: "Drought and desertification threaten the livelihood of over 1
billion people in more than 110 countries around the world." [6]
Unfortunately, because soil erosion has so far affected developing countries
more than the developed world, it's a problem that receives relatively little
attention. Accelerating climate change will soon alter that. In a future of
hotter weather and more intense storms, it will become increasingly difficult
to maintain soil in a fertile and productive state, while heavy rainstorms and
flash floods will wash away topsoil more readily. Meanwhile, agriculture may
become impossible in coastal areas inundated by saltwater carried in by
rising sea levels. We might think of global warming as an example of air
pollution (because it's caused mostly by humans releasing gases such as
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere). But if it leads to dramatic sea-level
rise and coastal erosion, you could argue that it will become an example of
land pollution as well.

NOISE POLLUTION
More than 15 million Americans currently have some form of coronary heart
disease (CHD), which involves a narrowing of the small blood vessels that
supply blood and oxygen to the heart. Risk factors for CHD include diabetes,
high blood pressure, altered blood lipids, obesity, smoking, menopause, and
inactivity. To this list we can now add noise, thanks to a recent study and
assessment of the evidence by the WHO Noise Environmental Burden on
Disease working group. The findings, first presented at the Internoise 2007
conference in August 2007, will be published in December.
The new data indicate that noise pollution is causing more deaths from
heart disease than was previously thought, says working group member
Deepak Prasher, a professor of audiology at University College in London
perhaps hundreds of thousands around the world. Until now, the burden of
disease related to the general populations exposure to environmental noise
has rarely been estimated in nonoccupational settings at the international
level.
The separate noise-related working group first convened in 2003 and began
sifting through data from studies in European countries to derive preliminary
estimates of the impact of noise on the entire population of Europe. They
then sought to separate the noise-related health effects from those of
traffic-related air pollution and other confounding factors such as physical
inactivity and smoking. In 2007, the group published Quantifying Burden of
Disease from Environmental Noise, their preliminary findings on the healthrelated effects of noise for Europeans. Their conclusion: about 2% of
Europeans suffer severely disturbed sleep, and 15% suffer severe
annoyance due to environmental noise, defined as community noise
emitted from sources such as road traffic, trains, and aircraft.
According to the new figures, long-term exposure to traffic noise may
account for approximately 3% of CHD deaths (or about 210,000 deaths) in
Europe each year. To obtain the new estimates, the working group
compared households with abnormally high noise exposure with those with
quieter homes. They also reviewed epidemiologic data on heart disease and
hypertension, and then integrated these data into maps showing European
cities with different levels of environmental noise.
The noise threshold for cardiovascular problems was determined to be a
chronic nighttime exposure of at least 50 A-weighted decibels, the noise

level of light traffic. Daytime noise exposures also correlated with health
problems, but the risk tended to increase during the nighttime hours. Many
people become habituated to noise over time, says Prasher. The biological
effects are imperceptible, so that even as you become accustomed to the
noise, adverse physiological changes are nevertheless taking place, with
potentially serious consequences to human health.

NOISE POLLUTION

NEW DELHI: Like air pollution, level of noise pollution is also found to be on
the rise in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR).
The government, however, admitted in the Lok Sabha that officials
designated as the authority for the maintenance of ambient air quality
standards of noise have not been provided with adequate instruments for
measuring noise level.
In a written reply, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said that noise
pollution has increased in Delhi and the National Capital Region.
"The analysis of data in Delhi reveals that ambient noise standards are
being violated at nine out of ten locations and there is a fluctuating trend,"
Javadekar said.
He said all deputy commissioners and SDMs of revenue districts, assistant
commissioner of police control room, all sub-divisional police officer
including Railways and Airports, chairman and member secretary of Delhi
Pollution Control Committee have been designated as the Authority for the
maintenance of ambient air quality standards of noise.
"Sound level measuring instruments have not been provided to the above
listed authorities. The Delhi Pollution Control Committee is requested to
measure the noise level and report for further appropriate action.

"In case of complaint, field verification through department, police

authorities and nearby inhabitants is done to ascertain the facts, as
informed by Government of NCT of Delhi," the Minister said.
The officials have been designated as authority as per the Noise Pollution
(regulation and control) Rules, 2000 under the Environment (Protection) Act,
1986 in the National Capital Territory of Delhi.

NUCLEAR POLLUTION
Nuclear Pollution: Essay on Nuclear Pollution and its Impact on Environment!
Any undesirable effect caused to the environment due to radioactive
substances or radiations is called nuclear pollution. Major source is the
Nuclear power plants. If traces of the radioactive substances are present in
the water that is released from the plant, it will cause nuclear pollution.
Emission of radiations can also cause this kind of pollution.
It affects almost all life forms in the surrounding environment. From
planktons to Human beings nothing is spared. To be more specific, the
radiations can cause mutations that lead to cancer, and the dose of
radiation or the level of pollution determines lethality or how deadly it is.
However, nuclear pollution is extremely hazardous in nature. It occurs as a
result of nuclear explosions that are performed while conducting nuclear
tests. These nuclear tests are carried out to invent better nuclear weapons.
The explosions cause release of 15 to 20% radioactive material into the
stratosphere.
On entering this layer, they start falling into the earths atmosphere. This
fall can take anywhere from 6months to several years. 5% of these
radioactive particles enter troposphere, which is the lowest layer of the
atmosphere.

The smallest particles of the radioactive material are called fallout. The
fallout settles on the leaves of plants and trees. These leaves are eaten by
the grazing animals. Radioactive material now enters the ecosystem.
Humans consume these particles through the process of food chain. Serious
health problems now arise. Ingestion of radioactive material can lead to
cancer and genetic mutation in humans. Fallouts that do not drop on leaves
accumulate over the sea. This can be harmful for the sea life, which
ultimately affects the humans.
It isnt necessary that only nuclear power stations cause nuclear pollution.
Even other industries, not related to nuclear power production, can also
contribute to it. Coal has small amounts of radioactive material in the form
of uranium and thorium. These do not bum completely and become part of
fly ash. Even while producing oil and gas, radium and similar elements are
released in to the air.
Radioactive contamination or nuclear pollution is the most dangerous for
the environment since the wastes maintain their radioactive properties for
thousands of years. There is no way to have them assimilated in the soil,
water or the air in the initial form.
Reprocessing is solution we have to extent of nuclear pollution and clean
the planet increasingly residues. The highest likelihood of radioactive
elements reaching open environment is by accident during the
transportation to the reprocessing plants located in some parts of the globe.
NUCLEAR POLLUTION

Nuclear pollution is not the only hazard that comes together with the use of
radioactive energy: mass populations are jeopardized on a current basis if
something happens to a reactor, as it was the case with the Russian
Chernobyl for instance.
There are other energy sources that are still highly effective without the
huge risks of nuclear pollution or irradiation: geothermal sources, ocean
currents, tidal waves, wind and waterfalls, all make alternative power
solutions that should not be neglected. Environment-friendly electricity is
one of the chances this planet has to survive.
Fish and ocean plants are highly contaminated due to nuclear pollution;
Greenpeace has repeatedly signaled out the huge amount of plutonium

effluents produced by the nuclear plant on the coasts of England, for

instance. Lobsters in the area have been found to be contaminated, hence
the effects not only on humans but on the entire ecosystem is devastating.
Attempts have been by an American company to even built a radioactive
storage facility on Marshall Islands, ignoring the even higher potential
threats for nuclear pollution under the circumstances of a growing sea level.
Such solutions may appear convenient from a certain perspective, but when
considered from a wider point of view, irresponsibility is obvious.
Nuclear Power Plants:
Nuclear power is power, generally electrical produced from controlled, that
is non-explosive nuclear reactions. Electric utility reactors heat water to
produce steam, which is then used to generate electricity. In 2009, 15% of
the worlds electricity came from nuclear power, despite concerns about
safety and radioactive waste management.
More than 150 naval vessels using nuclear propulsion have been built.
Nuclear fusion reactions are widely believed to be safer than fission and
appear potentially viable, though technically quite difficult and have yet to
be created on a scale that could be used in a functional power plant. Fusion
power has been under intense theoretical and experimental investigation
for many years.