It is very easy for us to shrug off our role in contributing pollutants into human environments, especially if those environmental costs are being hidden under our noses. However, even if we do not want to believe in the impacts of pollution issues, we may not have much choice. Especially not if our own lives or the lives of our loved ones are threatened as well. Here are several reasons why it is so important to address Environmental Pollution.
1. It Impacts our Health
Environmental pollution can have a direct effect on humans through physical contact or direct inhalation of toxins and pollutants. Examples of the latter include China’s smog and South Korea’s fine dust pollution that residents deal with almost daily. Another prominent example is the annual South East Asian Haze, a transnational air pollution crisis that affects people in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei and so on. In the 2013 SEA Haze event, the PM2.5 concentration in Singapore at its highest was equivalent to passively smoking 150 cigarettes (Van der Zee et al., 2016). Such direct exposure to the pollutants can impact human health greatly, causing short term respiratory illnesses or gastro-intestinal and skin related conditions. In the long term, it can lower our immune systems and increase our risk of contracting cardio-vascular and respiratory illnesses. Notably, Xiao Wu et al (2020) found that previous exposure to PM2.5 was associated with “an 8% increase in the COVID-19 death rate), highlighting that pollution can indeed have unexpected and long term impacts on our health.
However, exposure to toxins and chemicals can also be in a more insidious and unexpected form – through our food and water, the very essentials that are supposed to maintain and improve our health. The pollution transfer continuum and bioaccumulation are two concepts that explain why this impact occurs.
The Pollution Transfer Continuum is a timeline of pollution from source to sink, highlighting the overall large and complex reach and impact it can have. It is based on a study on The Phosphorus Transfer Continuum by (Haygarth et al., 2005; Withers and Haygarth, 2007) and is outlined in the figure below.
The Pollution Transfer Continuum
An important takeaway from this continuum is that pollutants can often be mobilised and transported to new environments far from their original source. In this way, they can easily enter surface or subsurface water bodies or agricultural areas, potentially contaminating water sources for locals (for example, read more on India’s Arsenic Groundwater issue) or entering the food chain through the body of organisms that are exposed to the pollutants (through the water, soil or their own contaminated food supply). Bioaccumulation can then occur with the gradual accumulation of the toxin in organisms along the food chain (Chojnacka & Mikulewicz, 2014), eventually appearing in higher levels when consumed by humans, with various poisonous effects.
2. The Longevity and Spread of Pollutants
The chemistry and original purpose of pollutants often result in them having long half-lives, meaning they can exist in the environment for long periods of time. This entails that new human activity could catalyse a string of events that disrupts the natural chemical balance, leading to the release or chemical transformation of the once buried or neutral pollutants. This is particularly a problem in the Arctic (Morello, 2011), where global warming is triggering the release of toxins once trapped in its ice and snow.
An added layer to such issues, is that the pollutants can also travel long distances, far from its original source, potentially turning into transboundary crises that are complex and difficult to navigate. Air pollution, as seen in the previous example of the South East Asia Haze event, can rapidly spread throughout a whole region, and aquatic pollution can become a geopolitical issue, with disproportionate effects on upstream and downstream countries should a river and watershed cross national boundaries (for example, see the Mekong River’s transboundary heavy metal pollution).
3. It Exacerbates Existing Problems
As mentioned above, environmental pollution can very easily heighten geopolitical tensions in the case of transboundary pollution. Furthermore, in recent years, the disproportionate pattern of waste and in turn pollution, has become prominent in activism movements. Statistics and case studies have shown that the richest countries and people in the world contribute the most to emissions and waste and yet the poorest experience the effects of such waste:
Source: The Guardian
- E-waste is often exported from developed countries, dumped and burned in less developed countries such as Africa and India (Minter, 2016).
- Pollution from transnational corporation-run factories in less developed countries are dumped into local rivers, contaminating rural water and food supplies.
- Environmental Racism jarringly highlights how the poor, rural and discriminated are targeted for waste and pollutant dumping sites – 70% of these in America are built near low-income and African American neighbourhoods (Bergman, 2019) In Canada, indigenous communities are protesting against the TransMountain pipeline which would cut across and potentially pollute indigenous lands (Cecco, 2019).
These are just a few of the reasons that make environmental pollution such a pressing and significant area of concern and as such, warrants even greater governmental, private enterprise and social action to prevent and counter it.
Author: Madeleine Shutler
References
Bergman, M. (2019, March 08). ‘They chose us because we were rural and poor’: When environmental racism and climate change collide. Retrieved June 28, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/08/climate-changed-racism-environment-south
Cecco, L. (2019, January 11). Pipeline battle puts focus on Canada’s disputed right to use indigenous land. Retrieved June 28, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/11/canada-pipeline-indigenous-trudeau-treaty
Chakraborti, D., Singh, S. K., Rahman, M. M., Dutta, R. N., Mukherjee, S. C., Pati, S., & Kar, P. B. (2018). Groundwater Arsenic Contamination in the Ganga River Basin: A Future Health Danger. International journal of environmental research and public health, 15(2), 180. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15020180
Chojnacka, K., & Mikulewicz, M. (2014). Bioaccumulation. Encyclopedia of Toxicology, 3rd ser., 456-460. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-386454-3.01039-3
Forber, Kirsty & Withers, Paul & Ockenden, Mary & Haygarth, P.. (2018). The Phosphorus Transfer Continuum: A Framework for Exploring Effects of Climate Change. ael. 3. 10.2134/ael2018.06.0036.
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Minter, A. (2016, January 13). The Burning Truth Behind an E-Waste Dump in Africa. Retrieved June 28, 2020, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/burning-truth-behind-e-waste-dump-africa-180957597/
Morello, L. (2011, July 25). Climate Change Remobilizes Long Buried Pollution as Arctic Ice Melts. Retrieved June 28, 2020, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-remobilizes-buried-pollution-as-arctic-ice-melts/
The Guardian. (2017, July 04). Is inequality bad for the environment? Retrieved June 28, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/jul/04/is-inequality-bad-for-the-environment
Van der Zee, S., Fischer, P., & Hoek, G. (2016.). Air pollution in perspective: Health risks of air pollution expressed in equivalent numbers of passively smoked cigarettes. Elsevier, 148, 475-483. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2016.04.001
Xiao Wu, Nethery, R. C., Sabath, M., Braun, D., & Dominici, F. (2020). Exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 mortality in the United States: A nationwide cross-sectional study.