Submerged Lands

Petroleum products are noted for their various problems. This is because in the process of drilling the petroleum products, the air is polluted and also in the process of using it the air is also polluted and all this affects the environment to be precise.

One major effect of air pollution is that of lung cancer and other related problems usually associated with the lungs.  The human lungs are so delicate that with the least amount of problems associated to it, it easily becomes inflamed.  The human lungs are noted or are developed purposely for inhaling and exhaling fresh air and nothing else and this is one of the reasons why it should be protected from debris.

Most of the pollutants in the air are usually forced into the human lungs and of course associated problems related to cancer are observed.  This is the major problem associated with this and has to be stopped.  Moreover, there are other respiratory problems associated with this sort of pollution.   Air pollution is a major contributory factor to global warming and as such global warming is very detrimental to our human health.  Many have testified that it makes the environment very uncomfortable to be in.  This is really a serious problem and cannot therefore be underestimated in any way.

Even sometime too much air pollution makes majority of people not being able to breathe very well.  The breathing is usually in a choking mood and can easily suffocate one if adequate care is not taken and this implies why adequate care has to be taken by one in order not to be a victim.

Air quality is very imperative to our human lives and health and is depended upon for its refreshing nature. Therefore it is often the right thing to find solutions to this sort of pollution.  One major solution to air pollution is that there should be awareness creation on the danger of air pollution.  Majority should be educated on the dangers of air pollution and as such once this sort of education is made, it makes things very easy.

Awareness creation is very vital when considering curbing the dangers of air pollution and its related or associated problems. There should be adequate measures taken on how to solve the problems of the major things that affect the air directly such as factories and other related issues.  When these measures are taken, it will be obvious that there will be a reduction in the way the air is polluted daily and hence will reduce its effects on man. Protecting the air around us is the duty of everyone and as such no one should wait for the other to start first!

Even though we always do it for a totally different aim, using pesticides and herbicides are among one of the causes of air pollution.  A compound called CFC is usually found in these pesticides and once released into the atmosphere our ozone layer is weakened thus allowing more ultraviolet rays into our atmosphere.  UV rays have a lot of harm on our skins and they cause skin cancers.

Nuclear industries contribute to air pollution too. From the nuclear energy that is usually dispersed, radioactive fallout gets a chance to pollute the atmosphere.  And while we know what radioactive substances are capable of doing to us, we can always get an example from the Hiroshima bombing and see how bad nuclear energy can pollute our environment and at the same time affect our health.

In our very own homes, we can also cause air pollution by failing to ventilate the house especially when toxic fumes from things like cleaning chemicals, paint and even a new carpet are accumulated inside our houses. This is normally referred to as Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) and even the presence of mould inside the house can contribute to it.

Whereas mining is a simple economic activity that tries to obtain minerals from the ground and sell them to earn foreign exchange, it also contributes to air pollution since a variety of substances get released into the atmosphere other than just getting the minerals. Gases such as sulfur oxides make their way into our atmosphere and cause acidic rain which destroys most crops.

Now that we are aware of the causes of air pollution and we’ve seen that it’s almost impossible to stop all the causes of air pollution, here are some of the things we can do to reduce the air pollution menace: start by stopping to plan for that car you were going to buy. There are already enough cars causing air pollution and we certainly don’t need any more. Besides, you’ll be reducing occurrences of traffic jams. If you do decide to have a vehicle, make sure that you use unleaded petroleum since it causes less air pollution than leaded petroleum. You could also try to minimize the rate at which your car consumes petroleum since this will directly cause less fumes to be emitted into the atmosphere. Planting more trees also has the same effect since they are responsible for ensuring that gases such as carbon dioxide and even oxides of sulfur don’t remain in the atmosphere for that long.

Reducing the air pollution menace is a challenge to all of us, whether we care about its effects or we don’t care to know about anything related to it.  At this rate, in the coming years, we will have bigger seas and oceans than we have now due to the melting of polar ice caps. This is no one else’s war, it’s ours alone and very few of us are fighting in this war. In the end it’s only us that are to be blamed and right now the effects can be seen, it’s only a matter of time… what have we done so far?

There are many common chemicals that are pushed in to our atmosphere.  Let’s take a deeper look at where they come from.  The majority of these chemicals are created and released in factories.  When you drive through a city and see the towering smokestacks that billow smoke, you can know that these chemicals are being created.  The production of plastic sees a lot of these released, because of the oils burned.

The burning of fossil fuels is the leading producer of the aforementioned chemical carbon dioxide. This is because almost all factories have to burn oil to manufacture whatever it is they specialize in. This is the chemical causing the most problems. Factories alone are not to blame, though. Civilian vehicles emit large amounts of CO2, as well. The US alone releases 20% of the global total carbon dioxide, second only to China, with a one percent increase. The most polluted city in the world, however, is not Chinese or American. It is Cairo, Egypt.

Low estimates state that anywhere between 2-2.5 million people die each year from diseases that can be linked straight to air pollution. This number is expected to continue to rise is something is not done. As stated, air pollution is a major contributor to lung cancer. There are numerous other medical issues it can create. Everything from asthma to heart disease can be attributed to this serious issue. Children born in heavily polluting cities have a much higher chance of developing these diseases at a very young age, despite their diet or weight.

So what is being done to counter this crisis? Both the government and individual companies are taking steps to try to tame this before it gets worse. Our government is legalizing strict pollution laws, meaning that each company is only allowed to emit so much CO2, or whatever chemical, per year.  Exceeding this limit will result in a large fine.

These new regulations require that factories have various filters in place, as well as reduce the amount of fossil fuels burned. Many smokestacks now have various filtration devices installed within them so that the smoke emitted is purer than it was a few years back.

However, many companies are also looking for and finding loopholes within these new regulations, allowing them to keep operating as they always have.  If the truth is to be told, it is highly unlikely that there will be any solution to this problem so long as we rely on oil as our energy source. There is no “clean” way to burn this, you can only limit the amount that is burned and hope that that makes a difference.

Smog, however, does not just suddenly disappear when fuel burnings are decreased. It sticks around for years, trapped without our atmosphere with nowhere else to go. The only solution is to find alternate energy, and try to wait out the damage that has already been dealt to our planet and its atmosphere.

Such industries emit a great deal of harmful pollution in our atmosphere.  These would be power plants, steel plants, acid plants, fertilizer plants, asphalt plant and others.  There are ways to control the amount of pollution made by these factories and industries.  Wet scrubbers can be a very good means of reducing the air pollutants that are emitted in the atmosphere on daily basis.

Another air pollution control device that you can also use in order to reduce the amount of air pollutants discharged today is electrostatic precipitator which is abbreviated as ESP. It is also sometimes called electrostatic air cleaner. This device is used to collect particulate matter from gas as it is being discharged. It employs the force produced by an electrostatic charge to rid flowing gas of particulate matter. Electrostatic precipitator is very efficient in eliminating fine particles from air stream. Such fine particles may include smoke, dust and others.  Such industries include oil refineries and oil and coal fired utilities through which electricity can be generated but smoke is produced. It can also be used in such industries as pulp mills.

Dust cyclone is another device which can be used to reduce the amount of pollutants that are being discharged to the atmosphere. As implicit from the name, dusty cyclones are used to get rid of particulate matter gas as well air stream. But one thing about this device is that it does not require filter.  In place of filters, it makes use of vortex separation. Gravity and rotational effects are used to separate mixtures of solid and fluid. Quite a good number of cement refineries as well as oil refineries are using dusty cyclones.

Exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) is employed in order to reduce nitrogen dioxide and also nitrogen oxide produced during the combustion of diesel. This device is used in cars and other automotives that use diesel. It has a built in feature that makes it possible for the combustion temperature to be reduced. This will frustrate the production of nitrogen oxides. Nitrogen oxide is formed rapidly if the temperature is higher. There is also a portion of the exhaust that is re-circulated to the cylinders. The mixture of the incoming air is diluted upon mixing with the exhaust air that has been re-circulated. This process will reduce the adiabatic flame temperature. The level of oxygen in the diesel engine will be lowered also if it is in excess.

Catalytic Converter was first used in the US in 1975.  It works by detoxifying the emission generated through the internal combustion engines. This device can be used in train, mining equipment, and exhaust system of automotives, generator sets and others.

There are also some air pollution devices that are meant to reduce the amount of volatile organic compounds.  A typical example of such device is gas flare which can be used in landfill and also in the oil refineries.  Having known some of the devices that can be used to control emission of air pollutants, it is left for you to buy and use them.

The quantity of carbon dioxide we exhale does no harm to the environment. After all, the trees are available to breathe in the carbon dioxide we breathed out. The problem is that this gas is produced and release to the environment in large quantity such that the breathable air in the environment is contaminated and the atmosphere is also affected. Many industrial processes require the burning of fossil fuel in huge quantity. As the fossil fuel is burnt, carbon dioxide is given out also in large quantity.

There are millions of vehicles being used on daily basis in the society today. Majority of the vehicles also use fossil fuel. The by-product of the combustion of the fossil fuel is carbon dioxide also.

Urbanization coupled with the economic value of wood has led to the deforestation. There are a good of number products available today that are made of wood. Consequently, a good number of trees are felled on daily basis in order to meet with the supply of timber for the production of these materials. When these trees are felled, the number of trees to take in the carbon dioxide is reduced.

Another gas that can lead to air pollution is methane. Methane is a dangerous greenhouse gas. Studies have shown that methane is 20 times fiercer and deadly than carbon dioxide. Methane gas is produced in large quantity and emitted into the atmosphere in landfills as the trashes are decomposing through the action of microorganism. You can imagine the harm done to the environment when you calculate the number of landfills that we have in the US alone let alone other parts of the world. Landfill is one of the ways through which the society is trying to manage its waste. Though effort is being made nowadays to improve the landfills so that methane gas can be recovered and diverted to something useful to man like the generation of energy, but more still remains to be done in that regard.

Do you know that some agricultural processes can lead to air pollution? Yes, there are certain agricultural processes that lead to the production of nitrogen oxides which is one of the known greenhouse gases that are the bane of our environment today. Nitrogen oxides are also produced in large quantity in the power plants located in many places in big cities.

Sulphur dioxide is another by product of the combustion process of fossil fuel. It is also a dangerous pollutant. It can also be produced during the burning of coal for the generation of power.  Air pollution can be very dangerous to man’s health. Some of the airborne diseases are caused by air pollution. Many lives have been lost through airborne diseases.

There is need for collective effort in order to control air pollution. Alternative means of energy generation can be used. For instance, in place of patrol powered vehicles, battery powered vehicles can be used to reduce the quantity of carbon dioxide emitted in the air.

We may be happy with the way we are living our lives now, but we are unaware that air pollution can harm us in countless ways that are so subtle that they haven’t been detected. It is for that reason that research is underway to assess some of the long terms of exposure to low levels of air pollution which is what most of the people in less industrialized countries experience. This research also looks at how air pollutants interact with one another in our bodies along with other physical factors such as nutrition, alcohol and even cigarette smoking.  Besides that, the research also tries to explain the relation between air pollution and cancer as well as birth defects and some genetic mutations.

It is nowadays said that air pollution results in “seasonal holes” in our ozone layer found in the atmosphere especially in Antarctica and the Arctic. This has the capability of increasing the amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching our earth where it is seen to damage plants as well as crops.  Additionally, it can cause skin cancer and also cataracts. This depletion in the ozone layer is due to the emission of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s) which come from aerosols, refrigerators and air conditioners.

Increase in the number of industries causes an increase in carbon dioxide which causes global warming.  Global warming works in such a way that it “blankets” our earth and thus disallows thermal radiation from escaping out of the earth. This causes an increase in the amount of heat within the earth and as a result we have more of the polar ice caps melting away and thus increasing the water levels in the seas and oceans. If this goes on for a while we would end up being covered by water, which is not such a good idea for everyone who cares about everything.

That is basically how important protecting our environment from air pollution should be. While most of us are really trying, we can’t always be sure which solution would be best for all of us. They very scientists who lead us into industrialization are the same ones who are trying to get us out of the problems that we are experiencing now. It is a good question to ask yourself what we have been doing to help them since all of us live in the same world. If you don’t have the answer then it’s necessary to start worrying since their war is our war.

Here are some of the things that you might consider: you can start by limiting your carbon emissions by maybe deciding to walk on foot instead of taking a car. If you must use a car, then you can try to use alternative fuels that can provide solutions to air pollution. You can also decide to quit smoking for this is one of the things that hinder solutions to air pollution from happening. It wouldn’t be that bad to turn into an eco boy or eco girl and plant more trees since this protects our earth by producing enough amounts of oxygen into the environment. Another way of helping is to ensure that you do not always waste energy since everything we do is connected in one way or another.

Radioactive pollutants pose a future problem.  With the experimentation and rise of nuclear power, there is also risk of fallout.   At the moment, these testing facilities are located miles away from civilization.  However, humanity’s birth rate is much higher than its death rate, meaning the need for constant expansion will not be going away any time soon. New towns and cities will need to emerge to house future generations, getting closer and closer to these nuclear facilities. Even if they are shut down and abandoned, radiation stays in the air for long periods of time.

Smog is the same way.  At the moment, all we are doing is constantly adding to the smog because of our dependence on fossil fuels. If by some miracle we were to discover a cleaner, safer, and cheaper form of energy tomorrow, our problem still wouldn’t be solved.  Smog does not just dissipate.  It can take years for it to disappear entirely.  During that time, many people would still face the consequences.  And this is in a perfect world, where we magically discover alternate energy. For the time being, even with the stricter regulations set in place, our generation is continuing to pollute our atmosphere. This is the same atmosphere that our children and grandchildren will call their own in the years to come.

As stated, even if the world were to suddenly decide to go entirely green, the problem we face would not just “up and leave”.  So, is there anything we can do?

Of course! While there are no immediate fixes for the air pollution pandemic, that does not mean we shouldn’t try. The government is beginning to take the right steps by requiring much stricter pollution regulations on high-profile companies. However, the regulations are filled with loopholes that allow the companies to produce more than their share of pollution in to the world.

The problem we face isn’t so much the pollution itself, as it is our mindset about it. When we look at air pollution, we don’t see it as our problem.  After all, although it is causing some problems now, they are not drastically serious and will not be so for years to come.  As such, it is far too easy to say “it isn’t my problem”.  The problem is that the vast majority of the world is thinking like that, especially the big businesses that are behind this polluting.

We are not the ones devastated, but we are affected.  Our children, our grandchildren, and their children will be the ones paying the price for our generation’s greed.  But it is not too late. Many people are trying to live “greener”.  Biking instead of driving helps lower the amount of carbon dioxide in the air.  Buying “green” products that are made in environmentally healthy ways support those making the right decisions, and discourage those sticking to the old ways. Many activist groups are successfully negotiating with companies around the world about their pollution problem, resulting in them setting stricter self-standards to take a bite out of the problem. There are solutions, although none immediate.  We need to let go of the need for immediate gratification, and release the idea that “it is not our problem”.  It is our problem, and it is our responsibility.

It is not only the respiratory system of the body that can be affected by poor quality air or by air pollutants but the cardiovascular system of the body can also be affected by air pollutants.  There are two main components of the cardiovascular system, namely, the heart and then the blood vessels.  Cardiovascular is very important for the proper functioning of the body.  It transports nutrients, hormones, the respiratory gases and even metabolites to the different tissues and cells of the body.  In other words, it ensures that these things are taken to the part of the cells of the body where they are needed. I t also ensures that waste product of metabolism and other foreign bodies are expelled from the body.  There are other functions that the cardiovascular system of the body performs.  The question now is: how does air pollutant affect the cardiovascular system of the body?

When these air pollutants are inhaled, they will be absorbed into the blood stream. Through their absorption into the blood stream, they will be transported to the heart. This can lead to ugly reactions in the heart which will eventually lead to the inflammation of heart and also degenerative necrosis – that is the death of tissues.

There are also some air pollutants that can alter the function of cardiovascular system. Such functional alteration can lead to the abnormality in the contraction of the heart. It can also affect the rhythm of the heart. Severe alteration in the function of the heart can even result in deadly arrhythmias which show no sign of damage to the myocardium.

From the above, it becomes clear that air pollutants can affect the cardiovascular system of the body which plays important role in the body. Today, many people are suffering from heart and lungs diseases. Though, research is still going as to what actually are the causes of these heart and lungs disease, but factors relating to air pollution can increase the chances of a person contracting such disease. For example, smoking can increase your chances of being infected with such disease. Below are some of the heart and lung diseases.  

Everybody is familiar with cold and flu as illnesses that affect the lung. But these are just minor lung illnesses that can easily be treated. There are other major ones that can be deadly and complicated when it comes to their treatment.

Pneumonia is another lung disease that is caused by pathogens like viruses and bacteria.  Patients of pneumonia have cough, fever, shortness of breathing and others.  Asthma is one of the major diseases that affect the lungs. It is found in both children and adults. It is characterized by such symptoms as whistling in the chest, shortness of breath, severe coughing and others. There are certain factors that can spark off asthma such as exposure to smog, pollen, infections and others.

There are quite a number of them. Owing to the importance of the lungs and the heart one needs to be very careful with the air he or she breathes. Do not expose yourself to a polluted environment.