Pollution is the result of human activity. Anyway, it worsens the quality of life and creates imbalance in the ecology. So this essay on environmental issues is devoted to the phenomenon of pollution, its kinds and consequences that affect every living being on the planet.

Environmental pollution

Do you want to know what home do we live in? Our home is the planet Earth, where we have air that we breath, water that we drink, ground on which we walk and that gives us food. Many people are completely mired in their work, entertainments and do see nothing around them. Although it is high time to open your eyes wide and to notice that our home is close to destruction. And there is no one to blame, except us.

About 40% of people in the world die because of environmental pollution, in particular water, soil and air pollution. These ecological problems in combination with rapid population growth lead to increase in the number of diseases.

Professor David Pimentel from Cornell University with a group of graduate students analyzed about 120 publications devoted to the influence of demographic and environmental factors (environmental pollution) on the spread of diseases. Here are the truly terrible conclusions they came to:

1. From hunger six million children die every year, besides malnutrition weakens the body and is an indirect cause of many deaths from acute respiratory infections, malaria and other diseases. 57% of the Earth population (6,5 billion of people) suffer from hunger (20% from 2,5 billion suffered from hunger in 1950 ).

2. Health standards are often violated in the cities and population density is too high, what can lead to the outbreaks of such diseases as measles and flu. Approximately half of humanity lives in cities.

3. Water pollution leads to reproduction of malaria mosquitoes, and as a consequence annually about two million of people die. More that one billion people experience the lack of clean water. Additionally, water transmits 80% of all infectious diseases.

4. Soil pollution leads to the fact that people swallow toxic agents with food and water.

5. Air pollution by toxic emissions into the atmosphere cause cancer, birth defects, disorders of the immune system. It kills about 3 million people per year.

That is the story. We all suffer from the pollution of environment. Really, there is something we should think about and try to take some measures to reduce the pollution or at least not to let it reach its highest point.

The planet has become too dirty

American researchers ecologists for 6 years have been studying natural changes. They claim that we can not live in a clean world, because everything is already dirty on the planet.

They discovered that toxic wastes of industrial activity polluted everything. According to the scientists, on the territory of 20 national parks of the United States you can meet at least 70 types of poisonous substances.

Russian environmentalists do not quite agree with their Western colleagues. They say that almost in every object today contain the full periodic table. However, it is not about the content, it is about allowable concentration level. They claim that there is maximum level of concentration of toxic substances, and it is not exceeded, it is possible to live in such an environment.

Nevertheless, the level of pollution is steadily increasing. Many conferences dedicated to this issue are constantly held, but yet there is no result.

Meanwhile, the leader of industrial emissions into atmosphere is the United States. Saudi Arabia and Indonesia are on the second place.

It is not accepted in the world to solve the environmental problem at the state level. According to the results of Carbon Disclosure Project researches only commercial structures solve the problem of emissions into the atmosphere. In the language of numbers, 80% of companies see significant risk to business in climate change. 95% of commercial organizations realize the seriousness of situation and work on its solution.

The greatest waste dump on the planet

“Soup made of plastic” has appeared and rapidly gets bigger in the Pacific Ocean. This floating debris strip, according to the scientists, is already twice bigger than the area of the continental part of the USA.

In 2004 “the island” weighted about 3 million tons, what is three times more than the amount of natural plankton. And its size was the same as the size of Central Europe. The “floating island” significantly gained weight.

This giant floating pile of garbage is always in the same place because of the undercurrents. The strip of the “soup” is about 500 nautical miles long. It stretches from the coast of California through the northern part of the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii and almost reaches the distant Japan.

Approximately one-fifth of garbage is thrown out the ships and oil platforms, the rest gets into ocean from the land. Now there is about 10 million tons of floating garbage.

And the result is simple: something that is thrown away into the ocean gets into stomachs of ocean dwellers, and then gets on our plates.

The pollution of the world ocean waters

There is only 4% of waters not polluted by human.

Human activity, fishing, emission of industrial and domestic waste, mining, etc., left an indelible mark in almost every corner of the world ocean. Scientists have discovered that today there is almost no water territories not influenced by human activity, and 40% of the world waters have undergone strong harmful effect.

Annually purposely or by accident hundreds of tons of oil and lubricants get in the world oceans. The most harm humanity caused in the areas of the North, South and East China, the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas. The ecosystem of the Red and the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Mexico are severely disrupted. Similar situation is observed along the east coast of the North American continent, as well as in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The least harm was caused in polar waters. However, due to the melting of the polar ice caps they will be at risk soon.

The impact of air pollution

Recently more and more attention is paid to environmental pollution by emissions of internal combustion engines.

Emissions from industrial and power facilities and road transport cause great harm to environment and consequently to people. These emissions contain such dangerous substances as sulfur trioxide, nitric oxide, carbon monoxide, dusts, lead and other heavy metals.

All the substances that pollute the air have negative impact on the human health. These substances enter the body mainly through the respiratory system. So the respiratory system is directly affected by pollution.

It is necessary to use non-waste technologies, to replace hazardous materials with harmless, to utilize hazardous waste and so on. To reduce air pollution it is also necessary to use the latest design of filters, choose the most appropriate technology of pollutants capture, as well as to reduce emission of the vehicle engines, improve environmental legislation and the system of ecological standards and requirements, increase punishment for environmental crimes.

We also can help nature to purify the air. We all know that plant have a great protection function; they help us make this world a little bit cleaner, protecting from harmful substances. It means that we should plant and grow more greenery. In such a way we will make our world safer and cleaner. Besides, coniferous plants influence positively human health producing essential oils. It is a must to grow the plant to protect yourself from pollution. If you do not have possibility to plant a tree at your house, at least you can buy home plant and you will have your own clean world inside your home.

The number of essays on environmental pollution is incredibly large. But in this environmental essay we tried to present information in the form of facts and numbers and to make it as clear as possible. I hope you enjoyed reading it. On Puressay.com you can find more great essays and also you can get help if you face problems in essay writing. Contact our team, we are always ready to answer all your questions.