Environmental Science Essay Research Paper The way

Environmental Science Essay, Research Paper

The way, we the humans, treat our own environment can be devastating. This is where the respective role of governments can make decisions that shape environmental policy and responsibilities. These governments can be broken up into four different levels: local, state, federal and international. Air chemical pollution and biodiversity are two current issues that can be related to the role of governments. Global warming is also another implication that has a devastating effect on the environment. Current examples include the rise in sea levels, polar meltdowns, melting of ice sheets as well as glaciers and human deaths due to disease from the effects of global warming. Firstly, the environment can be defined as the natural features of our surroundings such as plants and animal life, water, soils and the atmosphere. The solutions to these problems include improvements, and improvements must be done in the near future. This to maintain the world we live in, countries need to work together and create laws on the chemical outlet. Today we have to many nations working for themselves, but with the European Community (EC) we have made a start of a new era. This is a chance to collect and dispose chemicals in a right way. Together the different governments from different countries will support the development of an international strategy to observe and manage “air toxics”. The air toxics strategy will monitor and establish the levels of community exposure and manage emissions of selected air toxics. (Taken from the EC directives 1999)

Chemical Pollution is in addition to harmful substances to the atmosphere, resulting in damage to the environment, human health, and quality of life. One of many forms of pollution, air pollution occurs inside homes, schools, and offices; in cities; across continents; and even globally. Chemical Pollution makes people sick, it causes breathing problems and promotes cancer, and it harms plants, animals, and the ecosystems in which they live. Some chemical pollutants return to earth in the form of acid rain and snow. This acid rain will corrode statues and buildings, damage crops, forests and make the seas unsuitable for fish and other plant and animal life. The chemical pollution is also changing the earth’s atmosphere in a way that it lets in more harmful radiation from the sun. At the same time, our polluted atmosphere is becoming a better insulator, preventing heat from escaping back into space and thus leading to a rise in global average temperatures. Scientists predict that the temperature increase, referred to as global warming, will affect world food supply, alter sea level, make weather more extreme and increase the spread of tropical disease. Most chemical pollution comes from one human activity: burning fossil fuels, natural gas, coal, and oil to power industrial processes and motor vehicles. Among the harmful chemical compounds this burning puts into the atmosphere are carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, and tiny solid particles including lead from gasoline additives called particulates. Between 1900 and 1970, motor vehicle use rapidly expanded, and emissions of nitrogen oxides, some of the most damaging pollutants in vehicle exhaust, increased 690 percent. When fuels are incompletely burned, various chemicals called volatile organic chemicals also enter the air. Pollutants came also from other sources. For instance, decomposing garbage in landfills and solid waste disposal sites witch emits methane gas and many household products give off explosive organic chemicals. Some of these pollutants also come from natural sources. For example, forest fires emit particulates and explosive organic chemicals into the atmosphere. Ultra fine dust particles, dislodged by soil erosion when water and weather loosen layers of soil, increase airborne particulate levels. Volcanoes spew out sulphur dioxide and large amounts of pulverized lava rock known as volcanic ash. A big volcanic eruption can darken the sky over a wide region and affect the earth’s entire atmosphere. The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatoubo in the Philippines, for example, dumped enough volcanic ash into the upper atmosphere to lower global temperatures for the next two years. Unlike pollutants from human activity, however, naturally occurring pollutants tend to remain in the atmosphere for a short time and do not lead to permanent atmospheric change. Once in the atmosphere, pollutants often undergo chemical reactions that produce additional harmful compounds. Air pollution is subject to weather patterns that can trap it in valleys or blow it across the globe to damage pristine environments far from the original sources. Local and regional pollution take place in the lowest layer of the atmosphere, the troposphere, which extends from the earth’s surface to about ten miles. The troposphere is the region in which most weather occurs. If the load of pollutants added to the troposphere were equally distributed, the pollutants would be spread over vast areas and the air pollution might almost escape our notice. Pollution sources tend to be concentrated, however, especially in cities. In the weather phenomenon known as thermal inversion, a layer of cooler air is trapped near the ground by a layer of warmer air above. When this occurs, normal air mixing almost ceases and pollutants are trapped in the lower layer. Local topograph