What is Pollution?

Understanding what Pollution Is

• Key questions about pollution include what it is, why it matters, its causes, potential harm, and environmental changes it undergoes.

Chapter Sections Briefly

• Section I highlights the impacts humans have on Earth's systems and dependence on those systems.
• Section II explores the reasons behind pollution, types of pollutants, and their origins.
• Section III examines the Bhopal, India explosion of 1984.
• Section III also questions concern over very low pollutant levels.
• Section IV introduces the root causes of pollution.
• Section V asks individuals to consider environmental consequences of actions.

Massively Changing the Earth

• A 1997 Science article, "Human Domination of Earth's Ecosystems," addressed the impact of humanity on the environment.
• Human action has transformed up to half of Earth's land surface.
• Human activity causes a percentage of the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.
• Humanities use a percentage of accessible surface fresh water on Earth.
• Human-caused nitrogen fixation exceeds all natural terrestrial sources.
• Humanity brought a percentage of plant species into Canada.
• Human actions caused the extinction of a percentage of bird species on Earth.
• Major marine fisheries are being fully exploited, overexploited, or depleted.
• A 2007 UNEP report notes increased human domination and the human population lives beyond its environmental means.
• By 2025, two-thirds of ocean fisheries could collapse; it may be a total loss by 2048.
• Changes occurring are different than any point in history, and Earth is changing more rapidly than understood.

Nature's Services

• Dismissal of pollution occurs in the form of factories providing employment but many fail to recognize that all human employment requires nature’s services.
• Nature offers services such as food, water, and fuel, climate regulation, pollination, and soil erosion prevention.
• Nature also provides cultural benefits such as spiritual values, recreation, and ecotourism.
• Nature's services, ecosystem services, include benefits obtained from the natural world; the services affect individuals, and support other services.

Protecting Drinking Water

• New York City invested millions to purchase approximately 70,000 acres of land in the Catskill Mountains to protect its watershed, which provides drinking water.
• NYC restricted land use, stopping the application of pesticides and fertilizers that would pollute water sources.
• The city then protected the land from development.
• Grass and tree foliage slows rainwater absorption into the soil helping to prevent flooding.
• Soil traps pollutants as rain seeps downward to groundwater helping to keep surface water clean.
• Protecting the Catskills avoided the need for a $6 billion water treatment plant and $300 million in yearly running costs.
• Austin, Texas, has purchased about 20,000 acres of land around its Edwards Aquifer.

Preventing Floods

• China banned tree cutting along the Yangtze River to curb massive flooding after the government realised it contributed to the issue
• Trees' value is three times cut value.

Global Climate Change

• Cutting carbon footprint is a major environmental goal, primarily via limiting (CO2).
• Fossil fuel usage by humans releases large CO2 amounts into the atmosphere.
• Protecting forests and vegetation becomes necessary to uptake CO2 from the atmosphere, particularly tropical forests.
• Tropical forests loss contributes as much CO2 as the planes, trains, and cars worldwide.

Urban Trees

• Tree cover declined 30% over three decades in 20 US cities.
• Fewer trees mean more storm water runoff and air pollution.
• Tree leaves' stomata and hairiness help to remove air pollutants and filter particulates.
• The cut trees in Washington, DC, would have removed approximately 354,000 pounds of major air pollutants annually.
• Washington, DC's storm water runoff increased by 34% because of it, costing $226 million to treat.

Stabilizing Soil Depends on More Than Trees

• Grass is crucial to maintaining soil stability.
• The "dust bowl" impacted the midwestern US after native grasslands were cleared to grow wheat.
• A prolonged drought in the 1930s left unprotected soil across 100 million acres, leading to farm destruction, animal deaths, and human suffering.
• To restore the land, windrows of trees were planted to check against erosion.
• Midwestern states rely on water from the Ogallala aquifer for crop irrigation.

Other Ecosystem Services

• Undeveloped land offers habitat for wildlife, timber for lumbering, recreation, and aesthetic value.
• Undeveloped wetlands trap eroded soil and prevent runoff into streams and lakes, purifying the runoff with wetland plants and microorganisms.
• Wetlands also provide flood protection and habitat for various species.
• Nature produces timber, seafood, wild game, forage, biomass fuels, and natural fibers.
• Trees and vegetation absorb carbon dioxide, releasing oxygen.
• Earth's ozone shields against Sun's ultraviolet radiation.
• Vegetation and worms enrich soil fertility.
• Nature offers animals that pollinate food crops and eat agricultural pests.
• Bacteria, fungi, insects, and worms break down organic waste.

Pollutant Function

• Organic waste includes sewage, dead vegetation, animal matter, and natural/synthetic pollutants.
• Organisms, like vultures, eat waste in an essential way.
• Waste-degrading microbes help with waste.
• Glaciers provide water to major rivers that facilitate the use of agriculture, hydroelectric dams, industry, and drinking water.
• Desertification, conversion to deserts, reduces land for human/agriculture/species habitation and increases dust storms.

Vital Species

• There are many species vital to life on Earth in a state of decreasing numbers
• Humanity destroys habitat and pollutes the environment while causing extinction rates to rise 100x natural.
• The coral reef provides habitat for species vital to food chain, a livelihood in fishing/tourism to millions.
• Coral protects coastlines from flooding and erosion.
• Reefs are lost from pollution/runoff and ocean warming.

Pollution Is Obvious When

• Pollution is an introduction of anything into an environment that affects the usefulness of a resource.
• In the 1960's/70's, Pollution was blatant and highly detectable
• Industries polluted rivers and the Cuyahoga River caught on fire more than once.
• In industrial cities, soot drifted into homes and air pollution episodes were deadly.
• Trash burned in open dumps and increased heavy pesticide use.
• The new century sees improved environment in industrialized countries while the development degrades improvements and the United States abandons role as a leader in protecting it.
• A weed is a plant out of place as pollution is a chemical out of place and can be harmful.

Describing Pollutant Levels

• The terms parts per million(ppm), parts per billion (ppb), parts per trillion (ppt), and parts per quadrillion (ppq) are used to describe pollutant concentration
• PPM/PPB/PPT/PPQ can be described as a weight in soil/water/etc or in air as the amount per volume
• Low measures can quickly become disastrous if the oil in of a type easily degraded, or one that evaporates easily because the circumstances of the pollution are important factors

Synthetic and Natural Pollution

• While any substance can become a pollutant, industrialized chemicals are the most prominent
• Industrial chemicals affect animal life, growth.
• Low levels of chemicals may be seen by some as not a issue if they don't affect animals however chronic levels may lead to effects.
• Waste differs from a pollutant and refers to trash and it's impact and pollution is often apparent in wealthier countries with infrastructure in place to clean air and water.

Why Does Pollution Happen

• Pollution happens because not every part of a process is 100% efficient therefore waste is produced
• The body cannot digest every single part of the food processed and nutrients end up being excreted as solid and liquid waste
• No process (manufacturing and fuel) are 100% efficient and produce pollution and waste and lack of good tech enhances the issue

Architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart state

• “Pollution is a symbol of design failure.” In other words, wastes need not be wastes and pollutants need not be pollutants.
• They should return these to the manufacturing process, or ensure the wastes involved biodegrade.

What Substances Pollute

• Almost any chemical from natural/industrial sources can pollute and this includes anthropogenic pollution produced via human activity

Examples of Natural Pollution

• Volcanoes spew material that pollutes the environment
• Radon from rocks poisons the air, US EPA ranked radon, associated with human lung cancer, as second only to environmental tobacco smoke as an environmental health risk.
• Drinking water can be naturally contaminated with Arsenic Poisoning
• Population growth led to homes being built in previously unoccupied regions, including areas rich in asbestos deposits. Now asbestos exposure has become a major concern.

Pollution Sources

• "I am, therefore I pollute" applies to every aspect of modern life like: Motor Vehicles, Refineries, Manufacturing, Commercial Companies (laundromats, bakeries), Power Plants, Farming Activities, Mining

Important Terms in Conclusion

• Pollutant fate/transport: Pollutant spread (air, land, or water) where pollutants rarely stay put
• Biotransport: Moving of pollution through body tissue
• A pollutant fate can often lead to more dangerous side effects, some pollutants decades to transform into harmless forms
• Chemical fate transport are complex

Air, Soil, and Water Pollution Concentration

• Pollution concentrations are highest near emissions sources and some dioxins don't settle and contaminate forage later eaten by animals

Pollutant Impacts Occur Further From Source

• In 2000, a Romanian mine leaked cyanide and hazardous metal into the Danube River/Tisza River resulting in Yugoslavian fish dying
• An earlier facilities incident dumped chemicals into the Rhine, into France/Germany

Pollutant Transport

• Stratospheric CFC ozone depletion occurs as a result of of constant atmospheric pollution
• Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides (acid deposition precursors) mixes well atmosphericall