Pollution By: Brian Blomberg

28. September 2009 by student.

Pollution is another major social problem occurring all over the world. There are several different types of pollution which include air, water, land and noise pollution. Let’s start off with water pollution; petroleum pollution is one of the biggest when we talk water pollution. For example oil spills that occur all the time are in the category of petroleum pollution. There is an estimate that for every million tons of oil transported a ton of oil is spilled says David Kratz from an article on water pollution. This spilling is detrimental to our shore lines and to the ecosystems around. Our culture today tends to not care about the effects in the long run from throwing garbage in the water along with sewage disposal. There is an estimated 5 million deaths a year due to waterborne diseases. If everyone would just take the time to throw garbage away and companies/factories would not put there toxic wastes in the water then we could save many lives.

Air pollution has many long term and short term affects on humans. Our country has tried to reduce the amount of air pollution, when it introduced the Clean Air Acts. Carbon monoxide emissions fell from 197 million tons in 1970 to 89 million tons in 2006. Even though these numbers seem great, we still need to do better. One of the biggest problems with air pollution is the fact that an estimated 335,000 people every year die from lung cancer, which is a direct result of air pollution.

One of the most disturbing facts about land pollution is that according to Green Student U Americans throw 1 million bushels of litter out there car windows every day. This is something that could be stopped. This is something that our society has just brought into everyday life. This is a major social problem especially up in the northern states. Coming from New York everywhere you look there is garbage on the side of the roads. To me Florida seems like there is never any garbage on the side of the roads and for one reason why I think that is because kids are taught that is school. Kids that I have talked to in Florida say in school they emphasize wildlife and pollution.

In our society today, everyone realizes that pollution is extremely bad but no one really cares enough to stop it. There are good things out there right now like solar energy panels to power an entire house and things similar to that, but are too expensive and are a longer term investment. But there are simpler things we can do that don’t cost money like not littering and destroying the planet. This is a major social problem because we are just hurting ourselves.

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