Health affects of Air Pollution
By: Jack Pellegrini
Air pollution causes damage to crops, animals, forests, and bodies of water. It also contributes to the depletion of the ozone layer, which protects the Earth from the sun's UV rays. Another negative effect of air pollution is the formation of acid rain, which harms trees, soils, rivers, and wildlife.
Even healthy people can experience health impacts from polluted air including respiratory irritation or breathing difficulties during exercise or outdoor activities. Your actual risk of adverse effects depends on your current health status, the pollutant type and concentration, and the length of your exposure to the polluted air.
High amounts of air pollution can immediately cause health problems such as:
- Aggravated cardiovascular and respiratory illness
- Added stress to heart and lungs, which must work harder to supply the body with oxygen
- Damaged cells in the respiratory system
This can be very dangerous especially to people who have existing medical problems and can even lead to death. Even with the growing health care everyday damage from air pollution is hard to get away from and can be very dangerous to older people and younger children. Most people aren’t aware of air pollution health effects and often get sick because they were in air pollution for a period of time.
Long time exposure can lead to health problems or effects such as:
- Accelerated aging of the lungs
- Loss of lung capacity and decreased lung function
- Development of diseases such as asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, and possibly cancer
- Shortened life span
If we continue to have high amounts or even an average amount of air pollution it can affect all of us even if were healthy. Most of the time we aren’t even aware of the air pollution around us and that can damage our health. We need to figure out of how to stop high air pollution and make the world around us better.
What are some ways we can notify and show awareness in the community around us?
What can we do to have less air pollution in our lives?
https://www.newair.com/blogs/learn/air-pollution-understanding-the-problem-and-ways-to-help-solve-it
20 comments:
Air pollution negatively affects our environment, but it is even more important to acknowledge that air pollution directly harms the human population, which you discussed. I think it is quite obvious that pollution is all around us, so I think it would kind of useless to take efforts to make sure people are aware of pollution when they are already aware of it. However, I do think there are measures we can take to reduce the amount of pollution we emit. First of all, people can adopt different driving habits like carpooling or using more public transportation. Furthermore, people can use less electricity because the generation of electricity causes the burning of lots of fossil fuels that release harmful pollutants.
Air pollution definitely has a negative impact towards the human population and it is important that people take safe precautions in order to avoid it. The most deaths from air pollution comes from children under the age of 5 because their respiratory systems are not developed enough yet to help stay safe from those particulates. The amount of pollution that comes from vehicles and power plants are insane amounts, so maybe people should start cutting back on the use of daily things. Maybe start walking to school if you live close or stay away from chemicals that use fossil fuels in order to speed up the process.
This issue is such a huge problem because of its negative effect towards the environment and humans. There are certain places that do regulate pollution but in developing countries it is not emphasized enough. If we all collectively come together to reduce air pollution then there would be so many positive impacts.
The majority of air pollution comes from human activity and now it is coming back to bite us. The emissions we directly put into the air circles right back to harming our bodies and resources. Nothing good comes out of air pollution; the way we respond to the growing threat of it will play a crucial role in determining the state of our atmosphere in the years to come.
The pollution of our air is something that cannot be limited to one country or one regulation, but an issue that must be multinational and overarching to combat illnesses. Unforeseen affects of pollution in industrialized nations like the United States could include the worsening of children’s health worldwide due to noxious fumes that may find themselves in sinks of air pollution. And it is not only the job of industrialized nations to prevent usage of substances that can cause the adverse affects in our air, but to help the developing world to use more air friendly sources of heat or fuel. For example, in Mongolia’s capitol city, Most residents burn coal for heat which has resulted in a plethora of illnesses, respiratory problems, and a reduction in quality of life. Industrialized nations can help be a bigger part in a global solution to not only curb outdoor, but also the often more dangerous indoor air pollution.
Air pollution is a big issue and I think a lot of people are already aware of its existence but are not taking any action to reduce it. I think as individuals we need to be more of what we are doing and how its affecting the environment. It’s going to be difficult to reduce air pollution but it’s necessary to find alternative sources that cause less air pollution in order to lessen the risk of being affected by health problems.
Air pollution is a big problem that can potentially start affecting the human population more negatively than it already is. In order to bring awareness to the problem, we must make sure people are aware of the dangers (health issues) in the first place. People would be more concerned with the atmosphere if they could see all the pollutants in the air. We also must use renewable energy to cut down on the amount of emissions humans produce everyday.
As we talked about in class, air pollution is a huge problem that contributes to human health. To reduce the amount of air pollution we create we can decrease our reliance on cars and instead use public transportation or walking. We can also not use our fireplaces and wood stoves that give off particulates to the air. To persuade people to actually do these things, they need to be reminded of the serious health issues increased air pollution is causing today.
We’ve been learning about air pollution a lot in class and I think everyone in class has gotten a deep understanding of air pollution at this point. Back in the 1920’s people at least had a good excuse for the pollution in the air... they didn’t know what they were doing. But now.. WE ALL KNOW but just lazy
As we learned in the documentary "Before the Flood", there are simple things we can do to help slow down the expulsion of pollution, such as avoiding beef and depending on clean energy sources. To get the word out, I believe we should have the message be that we can stop the state of our planet from getting any worse, rather than saying we are all doomed.
Air pollution is a problem that most people are aware about are unaware about the fatal consequences. I believe creating awareness about the problems air pollution causes will help decrease the effects but not nearly the amount we need it to be. I believe the government must take a stand and create more laws to minimize the amount of pollution allowed in the sky.
Like many of our environmental issues, air pollution seems to be a problem that many people know about but are unwilling to help solve. Like Ishaan said, I think it would be tremendously impactful to create more laws that actually regulate the amount of pollution emitted. This would force people (or possibly the creators of products) to reduce emissions that are harmful to us and the atmosphere.
It seems like air pollution is being repeatedly pushed to the backburners when it comes to political change. With the laws you spoke about I think legislation could be passed to really help this problem diminish itself and help our world. Hopefully in the near future something can be done to reduce emissions.
Wow, this blog was very interesting! I never really knew about air pollution until the lesson we had on indoor and outdoor air pollution. It never occurred to me that air pollution can negatively impact our environment which can harm the human population. This is a huge problem in developing countries because they are not fortunate or educated on the topic of air pollution. It is very difficult to reduce air pollution, and it is becoming for dangerous because it can cause health issues. In order to take action we must minimize our use of emissions by not using a lot of personal transportation instead people should start walking or biking to places.
Like you said, air pollution can have some truly devastating affects on the human body which make it especially shocking how little the issue is talked about. To raise awareness of the issue, incidents such as the London Smog of 1952 should be discussed more as a warning to people of the affects of certain anthropogenic activities on increased air pollution levels and the effects if air pollution itself. As for reducing air pollution in our everyday lives, we can protest stricter regulations on activities that release vast amounts of air pollutants such as coal burning.
Building on Jacob's comment about pollution being an international issue, I also think it would be impossible to reduce or correct air pollution (or any kind, for that matter) individually. Global decisions regarding pollution emissions must be made in order for any progress to take place. The trickiest part is getting the countless political powers and parties to agree that Earth and its inhabitants are worth saving.
I really liked how your blog tied into the unit that we are studying right now. I like how you mentioned that even if you consider yourself to be a healthy person, you still can get diseases that are caused by air pollution. That is why it is so important for cities and states to regulate the amount of pollution that enters the air because human lives are far more important than money in the bank, which I feel is the reason that we still haven’t switched to renewable energy sources that don’t pollute our airs. Although our country is far larger than most, we are also far more advanced than most and are considered to be the one of the most innovative countries in the world yet we fail to address critical problems like climate change that not only adversely affects us, but the planet as well.
This is such an informative article! Air pollution is a huge problem especially in the developing world. Because these areas lack access to electricity, they often resort to burning biomass in homes. This emits up to 50% more emissions than coal, showing that while we view coal as problematic in the developed world, these nations need a source of reliable energy that often comes in the form of coal and natural gas. It’s up to developed nations like the US to shift to renewables in order to set an example and to improve our own air quality.
Air pollution has posed a great threat to the health of our environment for quite some time now, and although many have recognized the fact that air pollution is indeed a threat, many continue to underestimate the extent to which air pollution is disrupting the quality of our environment. This was a very informative article as it used stats and real world examples to portray the true effects of air pollution, especially in poorer areas and developing parts of the world.
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