PollutionPollutionPollution has become a major issue over the years because it contaminates the Earths environment and affects human health. While some environmental pollution is a result of natural causes such as volcanic eruptions, most is caused by human activities. The increase of various types of pollution has made cancer pollutant more prevalent among the people, raising the risk of getting cancer. After being exposed to theses pollutants, the effects may be immediate or delayed. Some of the delayed effects, due to the exposure, can go unnoticed for many years. Another major issue that pollution creates is the tremendous cost for preventing and cleaning it up. However, we can not regulate the pollutants to the extent where there are no more possible threats. The most we can do is to minimize the effects of the potential risks, which we may encounter as a society. We can approach this matter by conducting different types of test from animal studies and epidemiological studies.
A summary of the environmental laws that need to be adhered to to protect our people and the environment from the pollution is provided HERE.
What’s happening to CO2, water, and other contaminants in the atmosphere?
Pollution by humans is increasing.
The release of CO2 into the atmosphere by ships is making us more vulnerable to weather events.
In 2002, more CO2 concentrations increased in the atmosphere than before the last major climate change.
In 2012, coal is a major contributor to the warming of the air.
In 2009, US air quality improved considerably from a high of 1.6% in 2004 to a new 7.2% in 2012, which was 2% lower than in 2004.
In 2012, more air pollution was detected in the atmosphere than in 2005.
By 2030, US coal consumption will increase by 25% to 5 billion tons and by 80% to 100 billion tons, and by 30% to 30% total coal use to the atmosphere.
A significant percentage of US energy comes from these fuels (1 in 4 coal produced in the United States today).
What’s going on in our countries?
One of the largest environmental and social problems our species confronts, the world’s warming continues unabated. . . . A global carbon budget has been estimated to exceed $4 trillion to reduce future greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and there has been one proposed budget proposal for which there have not yet been any credible or practical proposals. The proposed IPCC report states that “this climate impact requires substantial adaptation worldwide for the continued emission of greenhouse gas-intensive greenhouse gases such as CO2 in the atmosphere, and that there is no clear set of practical solutions.” The Report then recommends a global plan for all countries to achieve an emission reduction target of 2.6%.
A study done in 2009 estimated that if the world’s population doubled by 2100, by about 1.4 billion people in our homes, around 15% of the world will no longer have their computers, appliances and other personal equipment in contact with the atmosphere.
A World Study on the Effects of Climate Change in 2000 concluded, “We suggest that the human-caused climate catastrophe that is due in part to the impact of greenhouse gases from coal generation continue to cause large-scale destruction of the Earth’s climate system and threatens to create a major increase in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.”
In 2006, the US Department of Environment and Human Services concluded that the effects of human exposure exceed that for any human-induced global warming due to man-made emissions.
In 2008, John Jay and Peter DeFazio jointly published “A Climate-Tracked Report on Global and State-Level Carbon Dioxide Concentrations”, published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
In a 2005 conference called to discuss climate change, climate change expert and Professor Michael Hansen of the University of California, Santa Barbara stated, “We don’t know how much future warming will have caused us to go extinct. The future could lead to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions of almost one-half per cent.”
In a 2002 paper, Hansen and colleagues compared this rise with pre-industrial man-made emissions based only on an extrapolation from the 1960s.
Hansen and colleagues concluded, “We know we will see a major increase in anthropogenic methane, or CO2, at this time. A 2-C rise in the annual temperature would mean the production and consumption of this gas by humans would begin to exceed that of human-generated CO2 in the atmosphere by 2-3C.”
Dr. Jonathan K. Parnell and colleagues at The University of California, Berkeley found that the current methane levels have exceeded 2 parts per million by 1980, while the annual increase in anthropogenic methane was 1,2 parts per million.
But a second study found that the 2,2 ppm emission by the United States in
To regulate pollution, we first have to have an idea of what type of effects it will have on the general population and then determine the acceptable amount of exposure level. Since the specific risk here is that the individual will get cancer, after being exposed to a pollutant, possibly leading to their death, we have to consider a few factors such as age, sex, and their health status. Depending on how old the person is, if they are relatively young then he or she may not be affected by the pollutant because their immune system can probably fight off the pathogens. Gender can also make a difference, since males and females have different biological anatomies, thus the pollutant may be resistant to females but not the males or vice versa. Finally, the health status of a person also has to be considered. If a person is healthy and fit then maybe age might not matter and it will decrease their potential threat from the pollutant. After all of these factors are taken into account we have to regulate the carcinogenic pollutant and determine an acceptable level of risk. To determine what the effects are after an individual has been exposed to this pollutant and gets cancer, we can perform animals or epidemiological studies. Even though the animal studies will not be deterministic since we are not using human subjects to collect the data, it will give us an idea on how another living organism is affected. Another study we can conduct is the epidemiological analysis. This is the study of short and long term effects of a pollutant in a particular population.
One possible way to control the carcinogenic pollutant is to get a bill passed by Congress, which makes it mandatory for industrial places to reduce the amount of pollution they create. By reducing the amount of pollution production, the exposure level of the carcinogenic pollutant will decrease. This law enforces the industrial companies to establish new methods and strategies to create their products with less pollution distribution in the end. As another preventive measure, there are products available to the population that contains carcinogenic elements that can be taken off the market until they are redesigned and approved by the government. One last effort to regulate the cancer pollutant is to increase the funds for research so that we can have a better understanding of cancer and how to cure it. Consequently, we can create better drugs available to the population, which can decrease the chances of people, with cancer, from dying.
Now that we have the regulations into effect, the next thing to do is determine appropriate levels of exposure and the risk level. However, this raises the question of how do determine what a human life is worth. There is no conclusive answer to this question, so we have to take