Pollution: A life and death issue

[stormbind]

Air:

WHO says 3m people a year are killed by outdoor air pollution. One study says 7-20% of cancers are attributable to poor air and pollution in homes and workplaces.

Land:
Contaminated land is a problem in industrialised countries, where former factories and power stations can leave waste like heavy metals in the soil. It can also occur in developing countries, sometimes used for dumping pesticides. Agriculture can pollute land with pesticides, nitrate-rich fertilisers and slurry from livestock. And when the contamination reaches rivers it damages life there, and can even create dead zones off the coast, as in the Gulf of Mexico.

Affected species include polar bears - so not even the Arctic is immune.

Water:

Chemical pollution was blamed for killing fish in Kankaria Lake in Ahmadabad, India. A recent study detailed the plastic litter that pollutes the marine environment.

Not a task for regulation?
Previous generations worked on the assumption that discarding our waste was a proper way to be rid of it, so we used to dump nuclear materials and other potential hazards at sea, confident they would be dispersed in the depths.

About 70,000 chemicals are on the market, with around 1,500 new ones appearing annually. At least 30,000 are thought never to have been comprehensively tested for their possible risks to people.

The above are extracts copied from this article.

 

[Pirate]

Mmm, pollution is bad, 'm'kay?

I believe that the biggest problem in reducing pollution is that the total costs in terms of damage to the environment and human health are not included in the price of a polluting good or service. Without factoring in these externalities, cutting corners often makes polluting cheaper than an alternative, more sustainable solution.

Unfortunately we cannot expect consumers to act on their morals. Consumer pressure will always be about the bottom line - price. The system as it exists puts very little pressure on companies to clean up their act. But if total cost were taken into account, consumer pressure would act against those products with the greatest cost to society - i.e. the polluting industries.

 

[Keirador]

I have to wonder whether pollution just might be seen as some sort of natural biological control. The human population has grown beyond belief in the past century. We're growing past our carrying capacity. Predators, wars, even most diseases don't act as proper limiting factors (compare the amount of diseases that kill thousands of people to the number of diseases we can easily cure). Maybe we're creating our own limiting factor- after all, the effects of pollution will become more pronounced with time. Eventually it could become the leading cause of death. We would be reaping what we've sown. Unfortunately, such a limiting factor would cause incredible collateral damage. It would be best to somehow manage to keep our population in check without killing off everything around us.

 

[Narz]

We all can make a difference.

Boycott plastic plants!

Buy a real one. Studies with elderly people in nursing homes show that those with a plant they are responsible for have far lower mortality rates. Granted this rise is probably more related to the responsibility of caretaking the plant and the feeling of being needed/useful but it's all interconnected.

Information like this is good because it connects us to the real life repercussions of "our" (humanity as a whole's) actions.

I think people need a violent wakeup call as to the inefficiency and waste of our current lifestyles.

If I had a lot of money and political, social leverage I would pay the whole waste disposal industry to go on strike for a month. Imagine, New York City, with no trash service. Wasteful people, covered in their own filth. The reality, no longer able to be denied.

It would be so beautiful. And I would be willing to bet that many people would make changes in their lives, or at least see things in a different way.

Beware of people with trash can lids!

- Narz

 

[stormbind]

Unfortunately we cannot expect consumers to act on their morals.

Which is why we need regulation.

 

[stormbind]

We're growing past our carrying capacity.

We grew past the ecosystem's capacity to support us, when our population stopped remaining steady. That was before recorded history.

Destruction of planet is inevitable. There can be no fix. The best we can do is manage our waste and slow the rate of Earth's decline.

 

[Akka]

Naaaah, it's obvious it's only a tree-huggers conspiration to destroy our economy, because they are just insane nay-sayers that arbitrarily wants to ruin the world.

Pollution is like global warming, it's only the invention of some lunatic european scientists.

 

[Perfection]

Buy a real one. Studies with elderly people in nursing homes show that those with a plant they are responsible for have far lower mortality rates. Granted this rise is probably more related to the responsibility of caretaking the plant and the feeling of being needed/useful but it's all interconnected.

I'm a bit skeptical, I'd like to see that study.

Pollution is definitly a major problem, I think the best solution is impact fees, fuel taxes, and certain criminal/civil charges for doing really nasty stuff. This way we can reduce pollution and not go overboard and ban certain items.

 

[BasketCase]

Unfortunately we cannot expect consumers to act on their morals. Consumer pressure will always be about the bottom line - price. The system as it exists puts very little pressure on companies to clean up their act. But if total cost were taken into account, consumer pressure would act against those products with the greatest cost to society - i.e. the polluting industries.

What will most likely happen can already be seen in my local grocery store: environmentally-friendly products such as cage-free eggs, organic lettuce, etc. are MORE expensive than their generic counterparts, not cheaper.

Could be because the store doesn't have a lot of politically-correct stuff to sell (smaller supply = higher price) or it could be because the store realized there's a niche market that wants these goods and is willing to pay for them.

Additionally--seeing as how, as you said, customer pressure is all about price--if you put an artificial price pressure on an item (such as fines on goods made by "dirty" methods), there will be immediate customer pressure through their Congress members to remove that artificial price pressure. Items such as car bumpers are an exception to this rule--however, what usually happens there is, the customer says he or she should receive stronger bumpers without having to pay the extra costs.....

 

[Mise]

What will most likely happen can already be seen in my local grocery store: environmentally-friendly products such as cage-free eggs, organic lettuce, etc. are MORE expensive than their generic counterparts, not cheaper.

I think that's what he was getting at to begin with -- there is no financial incentive to "buy green" for the average consumer, but if the bigger picture was taken into account when we go shopping, we'd surely buy green.

Could be because the store doesn't have a lot of politically-correct stuff to sell (smaller supply = higher price) or it could be because the store realized there's a niche market that wants these goods and is willing to pay for them.

Supply and demand has little to do with prices ( ). Supply is determined by demand -- if there is a market for 400 organic bananas per day, the supermarket will supply 400 organic bananas per day. Prices are determined by mark-up pricing (i.e. how much profit does the shop want to make per unit?).

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Do you think that its really that bad?

 

[Japher]

Organic doesn't mean environmentally friendly... it just means you, as a human, won't die or have bad side effects if you injest the pesticides, herbicides, and fungacides they used on the product.

The problem with moving towards environmentally friendly alternatives is that those who make us do so lack the forsight to determine need and results of their actions.

MTBE fuel additive being just one example. California wanted to clean up the air, so they required MTBE to be added to the gas. Gas companies made the change to their facilities passing on the price to the consumer. A few years later the same fewls realized that while the air was cleaner the soil and water was worse. Why? The MTBE made the air cleaner by being easier to rinse out through rain, causing greater levels of acid rain, increasing the PH of waters through leaching of Calcium carbonate. They shot themselves in the foot. Thus, all the gas companies had to go back to what they were doing for... passing the cost on to the consumers.

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

So basically theres no such thing as Envirimentally safe?

 

[Hakim]

Waste and pollution shouldn't be some kind of hobby. It should be controlled through laws and financial sticks and carrots.

 

[Mise]

So basically theres no such thing as Envirimentally safe?

of course there is.

 

[Japher]

The only type of environmentally safe farming I can think of is using insects to kill the bad insects... Still, some nut job will probably complain that farms are depleting nutrients from the soil!

 

[Mise]

You know, just because some environmentalist policies turned out to be bad ideas doesn't mean that all environmentalist policies will turn out to be bad ideas.

I used to be well up on environmentalism, but I don't know much anymore. Ask me a year ago and I'll tell you a few ideas. Using fewer cars and more public transport (or just walk or cycle, you know?) would be a good place to start.

 

[stormbind]

Organic doesn't mean environmentally friendly... it just means you, as a human, won't die or have bad side effects if you injest the pesticides, herbicides, and fungacides they used on the product.

Organic means pesticides, herbicides, and fungacides were not used at all.

Pesticides, herbicides, and fungacides pollute the environment.

 

[Japher]

PT would be awesome! Not just for environmental reasons, but for relief of traffic conjestion.. it's such a headache. However, try using it in CA... it's a pain in the butt.

I took a lot of environmental courses in school too, and I have a degree in chemical engineering. I did a paper on the effects of organic herbacides on watershed denizens. Without proper regulation we can kill a lot of animals very easily.

At the time of my paper rotenone was a very common insecticed. Rotenone is also what fish and game wardens use to kill fish. The LD50 was high, but the amount that was used could be deadly. Especially since rotenone needs sun light to degrade, however when you water your crop it takes the stuff into the soil and to the watertable. Lovely.

These instances are not just isolated ones, Mise. People need to be carefull with the environment, but not all environmental programs are sound or safe to us and our environment.

I'm for recycling, hybrid powered vehicles, catalyst for combustion turbines, etc...

 

[Japher]

Organic means pesticides, herbicides, and fungacides were not used at all.

No it doesn't. It only means that "organic" pesticides, herbicides, and fungacides were used.