Save Earth

Pollution Responsible For 40% Deaths

By Abrar H Rashid

 
Human beings, especially those who are affluent and rich, have degraded Earth’s livable environment and put this planet in jeopardy. Not only have we polluted the air and water but also the soil that helps produce our life-sustaining food. Having an enormous impact on everyone’s future, reports suggest that 40% - some 62 million – are caused by none other than pollution.

      This alarming news came to light in a study carried out by ecologist David Pimentel for Cornell University , USA . He was “surprised with the number” and suggested “the importance of the environment as it’s related to our deaths.”

      We, in India , should not dismiss this report with a shrug, but swallow it with a gulp. For ex : 70% of us drink untreated water! As Pimentel put it: “Water is one of the major concerns, without any question.”

As the world’s 1.1 billion people lack access to clean water (according to WHO), 80% of all infectious diseases – cholera, intestinal infections that lead to malnutrition – are water borne and kill millions of people, especially children, around the world. It is estimated that in India and Africa some 1.4 million loose their lives every year as a result of cholera, dysentery and other diarrheal diseases.

      This was confirmed by WHO-scientist, Dr Annette Pruss-Ustun. According to her, “Water sanitation and hygiene are considered globally one of the big, big causes of death.”

       She goes on: “While in many countries there is still (a) water supply (problems’), proper disposal and treatment of sewage is a little bit less common in developing countries.”

Air pollution is another killer that is playing havoc in the air we breathe: Every year, according to WHO, it is responsible for 3 million deaths; chiefly caused by such diseases as chronic bronchitis, pneumonia and lung cancer.

      Indoor air pollution –  caused by cooking food on a sigadhi, heating up water on stoves fueled by cow-dung, coal or wood – is being held responsible for such deaths and little more than half the world’s households, most of which are purely ventilated, use these fuels. WHO’s Pruss-Ustun found that “In some houses you enter into the kitchen, and even though you might even have a permanent opening in the house … you can hardly see … the wall on the other side; so thick is the smoke”! A common occurrence in slums and villages in India .

      This indoor pollution kills one person every 20 seconds or 1.2 million in a year, records the WHO. According to Pimentel, more than 200 different chemicals can be found in the smoke; 14 of them ‘deathly’ carcinogens.

Another polluted killers are toxic chemicals. These are one of the main health hazards for which basically the industries are responsible. It has been found that it is very difficult to pin-point these toxic chemicals because so many are used in combination. Bemoans Dr Pruss-Ustun: “It is impossible to estimate more precisely because …there are so many toxins”!

      Chemical exposures can contribute to development-of-cancers’, birth defects, immune systems defects, behavioral  problems, altered sex hormones and dysfunctions in specific organs.

       The industrially- and technically-advanced West is facing this problem today: Pimentel found out that Americans of all ages carry at least 116 foreign chemicals in their bodies. It is anybody’s guess that we, Indians, who take little notice of the pollution engulfing us, will be carrying four- to five-times as many chemicals as them!~

*The author is a Freelance Writer & Journalist, contributing to 150 publications based abroad.

The Unloved Earth!

By Abrar H Rashid

I Love Earth!

But now, especially during the past three decades or so, when humanity’s knowledge in science and technology is experiencing a massive leap coupled with a swift progress in living standards and degradation of life’s morality, my beloved is getting destroyed; life is slowly being ebbed out of her.

However, she is a tough nut to crack. Thank God for it!

She knows, she is the only place in this vast, awesome Universe who can hold life in its caring arms and that without her, no life can exist - either human, animal or plant. And because she loves us, humans, silent-she also keeps on sending us near-death, destructive messages in the forms of earthquakes, hurricanes (cyclones), floods etc.; making us ill and creating ‘soiled’ famines; not forgetting killing many of us.

Earth as seen from the failed NASA-mission of Apollo13 in 1970.

During the past, did she not send Tsunami, Katrina and Rita hurricanes, ground-splitting earthquakes as a warning to us, humans, alerting us that she is badly, severely getting hurt by us?

It did!

But, even then, we have not taken or taken little notice of the harm that we are continuing to afflict her with.

Beloved Earth knows us well; it existed millions of years before we started to walk on it, stamp it, dig it, built on it. No wonder we often call it Mother Earth.

But like little children carrying for their real children, we do not care for Mother Earth. This fact she knows very well and like all mothers, she forgives us, her children, and tries to accommodate herself to our devilish, destructive or crazy-style of living.

Take volcanoes, for example. Nature, the well-known environmental-science magazine published in London, has over a year ago reported that erupting-volcanoes actually help ward off Global Warming (that has led to the changes in the climate that we are facing today). According to it, the fine paericles thrown in the atmosphere by an erupting volcano lingers at high altitude in the air and, in turn, reflect the sunlight and warming infra-red radiation back in space before it ‘lights’ down and touches my beloved’s surface.

However, the sad part is that there are not many active volcanoes erupting in the world today; thereby making Global-Warming have a field day.

The off-and-on breakup of icebergs from the massive ice-land of Antartica, that freezes up to 60 per cent of our Mother’s fresh water’ in recent times is a case point. You understand what will happen if we fail to stop our Mother from heating up? We loose 60 per cent of fresh water! And the sea-level will rise upto 65 feet if this continent is deprived of ice; ‘drowning’ the coast and coastal-cities around the world.

And this Global Warming is not only melting the ice in the Antartica-region ; it has also begun to effect the Artic-region, too: There is less snow falling over this region; an uncommon occurrence, going against natural-law; affecting the lives of both animals (reindeers and polar bears) and humans (Sami-people) living in the Tundra region across the northern reaches if four countries: Russia, Finland, Sweden and Norway.

More so, the London-based Observer had reported that Global-Warming is also being held responsible for glaciers to burst! That means millions of lives are threatened; especially in our country, Bhutan and China. Pakistan and Nepal are also being hit hard by the Himalayan glacier bursts’.

Glacier bursts were uncommon in the just concluded century: 50 years ago a glacier burst use to occur once in 10 years. Now it is widely feared that within the next five years or so, glacier bursts will become an annual event!

They occur when melted ice starts moving down-stream; eating up villages, causing flood-havoc in towns and cities. It, the burst, also cause the glaciers to shrink. This means, the rivers whose lifelines are the melted ice or meltwater – like the Ganges or Ganga, Indus, Yellow River or the Mekong – will dry up in the decades to come and will harm environmentally the economies of these river-carrying countries, affecting the lives of the locals.

I am proud to boast that in Asia my country, India, has become the third largest economy (after Japan and China); growing at the rate of 8.1 per cent in recent times. But I am depressed to learn that we are losing 6 to 10 per cent of GDP every year die to environmental degradation! Take water, for example: over 70 per cent of water that we drink is polluted!

Global Warming is the chief cause of Climate Change that my beloved Earth is undergoing today. Chiefly caused by unhealthy, killing gases emitting out from motor-able vehicles and factories, it is recently cosing the world $200 billion(in revenue loss) a year. Side by side, it has badly, menacingly, severely afflicted my home-town, city, Pune, said to be the eight most polluted city of crowded India.

This past year we have had faced a heated summer, a water-laden monsoon … and the ongoing winter, which is taking a long time to leave us …?

Well, I expect, Global-Warming will close on it, crushing the cold out of it! Or maybe, leave it unscathed!

*The author is a Freelance Writer and a Journalist and an Editor-in-Chief of a news agency, ABIE Press Features. He can be contacted on: ritefeatures@sify.com

February 13, 2008

APF/FA-ULA/2285-690/87

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