Bright City Light by heng94_
Hello readers! Just a short introduction to myself, I am Jeremiah and in the coming few weeks, I will be talking about a form of pollution that has caught my attention: Urban pollution. What was the reason I picked this form of pollution?
Urban pollution is close to home and is a phenomenon that we can observe daily, especially for people like me who live in a city such as Singapore. I feel that it is needed for us to be more aware of the impact the cities that we live in have on both the environment and ourselves. According to Martínez-Bravo & Martínez-del-Río (2019), cities use three-quarters of the world’s energy and is the main contributor of air pollution (80% of worldwide greenhouse gases). Furthermore, it is expected that the number of people living in cities will continue to increase in the next few years which can possibly lead to an increase in urban pollution due to consumption of energy and products.
Furthermore, I am very interested about the effects of urban pollution on wildlife. For example, light pollution in the Caribbean has led to reduction of the nesting sites of sea turtles in the area (Brei, Pérez-Barahona & Eric Strobl). This has possibly detrimental consequences on the environment and biodiversity that are irreversible. These are some examples of urban pollution:
- Air pollution from car exhaust
- Water pollution from dumping of toxic waste into water bodies by industrial places
- Noise pollution from vehicle movement
- Light pollution from city lights
In the next few weeks I will be discussing the consequences of urban pollution on the environment and on human health. Not only that, I will also be sharing possible ways to people can help contribute less to urban pollution.
References:
Martínez-Bravo, M. and Martínez-del-Río, J., 2019. Urban Pollution and Emission Reduction. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, [online] pp.1-11. Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330766849_Urban_Pollution_and_Emission_Reduction> [Accessed 22 August 2020].
Brei, M., Pérez-Barahona, A., & Strobl, E. (2016). Environmental pollution and biodiversity: Light pollution and sea turtles in the Caribbean. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 77, 95–116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2016.02.003
Bright City Lights by heng94_ on Snapshot from https://snapshot.canon-asia.com/india/en/mystory/view/951-bright-city-lights