Words: 755
According to Sprouts, “For more than a decade, local residents in the trip-state valley bounded by Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia have claimed to suffer from health problems, including rashes, respiratory problems and even cancers” (DO). In 1 948, in the industrial town of Donors, Pennsylvania, which sits in a valley, had twenty deaths, and nearly 6,000 residents, or 40% of the population, suffered respiratory problems (Delano 25, 26). New York experienced several killer smog, which in a later analysis attributed, from the usually severe pollution, 58 deaths (Delano 26).
Not only in the United States are health problems caused by air pollution showing up, but they are also showing up in other parts of the world, like Europe. In 1930, in Belgium Muse River valley, a major industrial region, where the primary fuel was coal reported sixty deaths, and about 6,000 residents of the valley became ill with breathing problems and respiratory infections (Delano 25). In December 1 952, the toll was huge in London from the infamous smog, which caused up to 4,000 deaths, when levels of sulfur oxides and particulates rose above normal (Delano 26).
Air pollution also increased deaths from chronic lung disease in the United States. “Although statistics on the physical effects of air pollution are not easily calculated,” according to Delano, “an alarming related statistic is that between 1970 and 1986, deaths in the United States from chronic lung disease rose 36%” (35). Air pollution has cost a great deal of money on health care in the United States. In terms of health care and lost productivity, the costs of air pollution in the United States alone have been estimated at more than $1 00 billion (Delano 35).
Another cost air pollution has caused is human life, which is incalculable (Delano 35). Air pollution causes many health problems that lead to death. Also, air pollution causes a great deal of damage to the environment and property. Lot of air pollution creates acid rain, which deteriorates things. Acid rain began to emerge as a serious problem in the late sass’s, when a decline in fish population was noticed by scientists in Scandinavia (Delano 37). In the sass’s, a number of studies related the declining of fish stocks and forest damage to acid rain from industrialized and urban areas, often hundreds of lies away (Delano 37-8).
Thousands of lakes and streams, across the northeastern part of the United States and the mid-Atlantic states, in Canadian provinces, in Scandinavian countries and in other parts of Europe, have acid concentrations so high that aquatic food chains are destroyed, and fish die off (Gay 26). Land is also destroyed by acid rain. In North American and European forests, and tropical rainforest’s in Mexico and Central America, vast numbers of red spruce, pine, fur, and other trees wither and die (Gay 26). Acid rain also destroys world-famous structures such as the Tax Mammal, the
Statue of Liberty, the Parthenon, and ancient Amman ruins (Gay 26). Fresh paint on buildings and new cars fades quickly due to acid rain (Gay 26). Acid rain may also be damaging crops (Delano 42). Dust settling, from nearby dust sources, also cause damage to crops (Sprouts 1 11). Visible damage is cause by such heavy tasteful to pine trees, alfalfa, cherry trees, beans, oats, and citrus trees (Sprouts 11 1). Concentrations as low as only a few micrograms per cubic meter of “fluorides” injure various plants (Sprouts 1 12).
Dusts of aluminum fluoride, creosote, calcium fluoride, and apatite, and such asses as hydrogen fluoride, silicon tetrachloride, carbon tetrachloride, and fluorine are all included as fluorides (Sprouts 112). Trees are dying because of air pollution. The German Ministry of Food, Agriculture, and Forestry say that the primary cause of damage to more than half of forested regions of West Germany in 1988 was air pollution (Delano 37). Ponderosa pine forests have been severely damaged by air pollution (Sprouts 111). Artwork and history is being erased as air pollution causes them to deteriorate (Delano 45).
The Mellon Institute had study of economic losses in Pittsburgh in 1912-13 due to IR pollution, indicated annual losses about $10 or $20 million per person (Sprouts 46-7). Air pollution is killing the environment and property. In conclusion, air pollution is killing the earth and its people. In order to Stop the killing of the earth and its people by air pollution, the people must become involved. A recent strategy that has been suggested for individual action is “green consuming” or buying “green” products (Gay 120-21). Green consuming is buying or using goods and services that do not harm the air, water, or land (Gay 121).