We know about space trash, but we are turning something much closer to us into a gigantic rubbish dump as well: the ocean. Held in place by underwater currents, it stretches from the California coast, past Hawaii, almost to Japan. It’s the world’s biggest dump.
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A new study says that water, air and soil pollution account for up to 40% of deaths worldwide each year. That’s 62 million deaths that could have been prevented.
In LiveScience.com, Andrea Thompson quotes ecologist David Pimentel as saying, “We were surprised with the number. [This] suggests the importance of the environment as it’s related to our deaths.” He goes on to say that “water is one of the major concerns, without any question.” The World Health Organization estimates that around 1.1 billion people do not have access to clean water and that waterborne infections account for 80% of all infectious diseases around the world. According to Pimental, for many people in the world, “it’s a challenge just to get clean water.”
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One type of human pollution is helping to offset another one. One of our major pollutants is nitrogen, which comes from fertilizer run off. Another major pollutant is the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, which comes from car exhausts and power plant emissions. Now researchers have discovered that nitrogen deposits on the forest floor are helping young trees soak up even more CO2 than they normally would.
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Twenty million: That’s how many tires are discarded every year in New York State alone. The UN thinks that between 20 and 50 million tons of computers are thrown away as obsolete every year. Rubber tires cannot be recycled into new tires and computer parts are toxic. What can be done about this?
Discarded computers create serious risks to human health and the environment, because of the toxic chemicals they contain. Huge shipments of defunct computers are sent regularly from the US to China and India, where they are broken up for scrap. This work is often done by children working in huge dumps. This is a problem that desperately needs to be solved.
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