Pollution: A Problem for EVERYONE

There are six types of pollutions: air pollution, water pollution, radioactive pollution, land pollution, noise pollution, and thermal pollution. However, I'll focus more in water and air pollution. During my research I learned many things like that pollution affects your heart, specially a woman's heart. I also learned that it affects the lung development of a kid. China's water and air are one of the most polluted ones. Things like one single car accident around all the world may affect the pollution of a river, like happened once in the United Kingdom, by the Cledwyn River.

Let's state better what water pollution is, according to Think Quest-Water. Water pollution is the contamination of water by foreign matter that makes water bad. Water pollution can happen on body of waters like bays, streams, underground water, oceans, and rivers. Pollution in water is involved with release of toxic substances, pathogenic germs, substances that require much oxygen to decompose, easy-soluble substances, radioactivity, etc. that are deposited on the bottom of a body of water. Water pollution can lead to eutrophication: lack of oxygen in a water body caused by excessive algae growths because of enrichment of pollutants. The major sources of water pollution are petroleum products, synthetic agricultural chemicals, heavy metals, hazardous wastes, excess organic matter, sediment, infectious organisms, air pollution, thermal pollution, soil pollution

Think Quest-Air says, "Air pollution is indication of disturbances to the composition of compounds in the atmosphere, as it may be summarized as shown:excess emission of gases/vapors into atmosphere, saturation of chemical, compounds/particulates, rate of dissipation < rate of absorption through various cycles (i.e. carbon and nitrogen cycle), emergence of new chemical reactions of reactive and non-biodegradable compounds". Some results of pollution are global warming, acid rain, smog, ozone, and depletion. Some sources that produce air pollution are motor vehicle exhaust, heat and power generation facilities, industrial processes, auto manufacturing, fertilizers plants, building, demolition, solid waste disposal, solvent evaporation, volcanic eruption, fuel production, roadway construction, electrical components manufacturing, extraction of metals, and forest fires.

BBC News/Health says, "Air pollution increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. Researchers studied 66,000 women in and around 36 US cities, finding pollution levels varied between four to nearly 20 micrograms per cubic meter". It's not sure if women’s hearts is more sensible that men's, but women's coronary arteries are smaller so this gives them less defenses. There was a study with women from the Women's Health Initiative ages 59-70. It took about 9 years monitoring them to see which of them went on to suffer a heart attack or stroke, undergo bypass surgery, or die from cardiovascular causes. 1,816 women had cardiovascular problems.

Other things I learned doing this is that pollution affects the lung growth ok a kid. The study is with kid ages 10-18. Kids that live 500 meters away from a main road have much less developed lungs ate 18 years old than kids 1500 meters or more away from them. BBC News/Health-UK tell what the University of California authors warn on The Lancet, "Many children live and go to schools near to busy roads and could be at risk". Also I read that Jilin Petrochemical had to pay a fine of 1m Yuan ($125,000 dollars) because it spilled about 100 tonnes of carcinogen benzene on the Shongua River, cutting water supplies to the city of Harbin and also affecting Russia. One more that I read about is that a truck in UK went to close to a street in development, so a bump made it fall and roll by a slope. That is sad, but at the end it felt by the plain of the Cledwyn River, and it started spilling a lot of oil. It was polluting so much the river that Emergency Services had to work A LOT to prevent more oil to spill. BBC News-Wales even get to say the river was threatened.

Finally, all this leads me to another path. I'm a woman, so I'm really scared. Also, something big is that I live in the city, and I study in one of the very few schools in Cartagena that are in the middle of the city. I've notice that what people are really concerned in school areas is to remember drivers that students might be walking by. But, what about our lungs? I'm also concerned because maybe I might have eaten seafood from polluted waters and haven't noticed it. So, If you are a women, what do you feel after having read this? Aren't you concerned, and even in the deepest, aren't you scared? If you live in the middle of the city, how do you think it affects you? Hope you leave a comment answering these questions and giving you opinion about all this.