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Toxic substances that have been released on land include acidic chemicals, inorganic metals (such as mercury or arsenic) flammable solvents, pesticides, herbicides, phenols, explosives, and so on. For example benzene is a common industrial chemical that is also used in plastics, as well as dyes, nylon, food additives, detergents, drugs, fungicides, and gasoline. Benzene is a toxic and can cause of a anemia, bone marrow damage, and leukemia. Studies have shown that benzene workers are several times more likely than the general population to get leukemia.
Solid wastes come from residential garbage, industrial wastes, agricultural wastes, mining wastes. The most cornrow one we usually meet is residential garbage. Only about a third residential wastes are recovered through recycling. A low proportion that is due to the lack of financial backing for recycling operations, the small size of markets for recycled products, and toxic chemicals present in recyclable garbage. City garbage dumps are significant sources of pollution, containing toxic substances such as cadmium (from rechargeable battery), mercury, lead from car battery, and TV pictures tube), vanadium, copper, zinc, and BPCS.
Nuclear wastes Light water nuclear reactors contain radioactive materials, including known carcinogens such as strontium 90, cesium 137, barium 140, and iodine 1 31 . Extremely high levels of radiation from these elements can kill a person, lower dosages (especially if radioactive dust particles are inhaled or ingested) can cause thyroid, lung, or bone cancer as well as genetic damage that will be transmitted to future generations. Depletion of Species and Habitats Human activity has rendered dozens of plants and animal species extinct.
Since 1 600 at least 96 known pieces of mammals and 88 major identifiable species of birds are known to have become extinct. Several hundred more species such as whales and salmon today find themselves threatened by commercial fishing. Forest habitats on which the bulk of species depend are also being decimated by the timber industry. Depletion of Fossil Fuels until the early asses, fossil fuels were being depleted at an exponentially rising rate. That is, the rate at which they were being used had doubled with he passage of a regular fixed time period.
Some early predictions of resources depletion assumed that fossil fuels would continue to be depleted at these exponentially rising rates. If continued, an exponentially rising rate of depletion would end with the complete and catastrophic depletion of the resource in a relatively short time. Estimated world resources of coal would be depleted in about 1 Arrears, estimated world reserves of oil would be exhausted in about arrears and estimated reserves of natural gas would last only about arrears.
Depletion of Minerals If earlier exponentially rising rates of depletion continued then aluminum would have been scheduled for exhaustion in the year 2003, iron in 2025, manganese in 2018, molybdenum in 2006, nickel in 2025, tungsten in 2000, zinc in 1 990, and copper and lead in 1993. World resources are also limited, and the depletion rates of the world’s supplies of minerals will also eventually peak and then gradually decline as remaining supplies become harder and more expensive to mine.
The precise impact the limitation of worlds supplies ill have on us exceedingly difficult to predict Anesthesiologists may continue to develop , which will reduce the difficulty and cost of mineral extraction and extend the period of decline. This has in fact been the case for most mineral up to the present. Increased recycling may reduce the need for intensive mining of remaining minerals reserves. Substitutes may be found for many of the minerals whose supply is limited, and technological development may make many current uses of these minerals obsolete.