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Without a doubt, one of the leading concerns of the never-ending increase of air pollution are its human health repercussions. Due to the numerous sources of carbon emissions released into the environment, the very air we breathe grows dangerously polluted. To outline the seriousness of this issue, one third of deaths from lung cancer, heart diseases and strokes are due to the inhaling of this polluted environment according to the world health organization. The microscopic molecules have the ability to slip past the defences in the respiratory system and damage our circulatory and immune systems. Major health concerns include higher blood pressure as a result of the narrowing of arteries, irritation in circulatory organs and many many more. These effects are more susceptible to children, elderly and pregnant women.
Acid rain, eutrophication, haze, wildlife effects, depletion of ozone, forest and crop damage are only some of the many effects on the environment alone. In summary, the ramifications of air pollution has a significant impact on not only us as human beings but the environment we live in as whole. The reacting compounds of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and water vapour, also known as greenhouse gases, have the largest impact on our multicellular organisms and its ecosystems. These reactions provoke the likes of acidifying bodies of water (process of acid rain), overflow the concentration of nutrients in aquatic ecosystems (process of eutrophication) and absorption of toxic pollutants into the soils in which we grow our crops. Within the long term, scientists have found shifts in biodiversity in different populations of animals throughout the world generating less diverse habitats.
The concept of global warming is familiarized to the majority of the population. Understanding the role of air pollution in escalating global warming is the key concept we discuss within this paragraph. The greenhouse gases mentioned earlier are primarily responsible for trapping the heat from the sun in the earth’s atmosphere causing the climate to warm. Greenhouse gases are a natural part of the earth’s atmosphere, but its increasing amounts over the past century causes our climate to warm at an unpredictable pace. This increase comes from vehicle exhaust pollutants released from industrial factories, power plants, agricultural farming, and other sources.
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