POLLUTION

muck, stink and poison

Pollution. You can't miss it, can you? It's everywhere... all over our planet. It makes people, other animals and plants sick or even kills them. It's even making the climate change. Humans are the cause and humans will have to try and stop it... especially you kids, because the future is yours! Please join me in this guide as I find out what's happening and give you ideas to try and make things better for everyone. Smelling, hearing, seeing When you step out of your house in the morning: what do you smell? Fresh air? More likely you smell something people have made: car exhaust, factory stinks or smoke from someone's cigarette. Perhaps you've never smelt real fresh air: the sweet smell of damp earth, the scent of pine trees or of the sea. These are the breath of our planet. what do you hear? Birdsong? Nothing? More likely you hear the roar of traffic on a nearby road, an airliner overhead, someone's TV or radio. Perhaps you've never been lucky enough to hear the gentle sounds of wild places: grasshoppers chirping, birds singing, the wind sighing gently in the trees, the burble of a little stream. Or just the deep stillness of a night when there's no wind to make any sound. Everyone should be able to hear these sounds. They are the voice of our planet. what do you see? More houses, factories, apartment blocks, streets, cars, buses and stuff. Perhaps you've never been to a place where everything you can see is natural with no sign of anything people have made: mountains, forests, coasts, rivers, lakes, wilderness. These are the real world; they are what remains of our natural planet and they belong to all of us. And if you live in a big city with lights everywhere at night, you've probably never seen the myriads of stars and the Milky Way which make the wonder of the night sky. So what did you see, smell and hear? Almost certainly some pollution... Probably lots of it. What is pollution? Well, what is it? Stinky stuff? Muck? Poison? Yes, all those things... and more. Some is obvious like smoke which you can see but much of it is not obvious at all. Yet you're eating it and drinking it and breathing it most of the time. And what is worse is that all this muck affects all other life on Earth. You can find pollution made by people just about everywhere on the planet. Even remote places like the Arctic are badly polluted by nasty chemicals made by people. The polar bears and seals there have poisonous chemicals made by people in their bodies and so do the Inuit people who live with them. These nasty things kill many animals and make others sick -- including penguins in the Antarctic. They also kill people and make them ill too. There's nowhere on the planet left with no pollution; not even the bottom of the sea or high up in the air. This is bad news and I'm very sad about it. But I'm less sad now. Why? Because I can warn you and because I know you kids can help. It's not your fault. It's grown-up people who made all this mess, often because they didn't even realise what they were doing. Sadly some adults certainly do know, but carry on messing up the planet anyway because they are making lots of money or just don't care. They don't care about the future. And, hey, that's your future Cigarettes and smoking If someone in your family smokes, you have a problem. Why? Because cigarette (and cigar) smoke is one of the most common forms of pollution on the planet. It's one you're bound to have come across even if no one in your family smokes. Smoke from cigarettes harms everyone's health. It even harms people if they don't smoke themselves but breathe other people's smoke. So if someone in your family does smoke, why not see if you can help them to stop? Smoking does no one any good. The best thing is not to start in the first place because smokers find it very hard to give up. They get hooked on stuff in tobacco called nicotine. Nicotine itself is a poison. But the real nasties in tobacco smoke are chemical things called carcinogens. They cause cancer and loads of other diseases which kill millions of people every year, mostly smokers but also people who don't smoke. Why do people smoke? I don't know; do you? None of my cool penguin friends do. Nor does my friend Jessica, who quit smoking and started a great website called ucanbreathe to help other smokers quit and show how crazy it is to start! What smoking does to people it kills 434,000 people a year in the USA it kills 750,000 people in China each year. One third of 300 million Chinese men now under 30 will be killed by cigarettes unless they quit it killed almost 5 million people worldwide in 2000 up to 60,000 Americans die each year from secondary smoke (also called 'passive smoking' or 'sidetream smoke') where people who don't smoke breathe in the pollution from smokers' cigarettes non-smoking adults who regularly breathe cigarette smoke - passive smoking - face a 20% increased risk of cancer if your parents smoke, it will damage your lungs too more than half of all deaths from smoking are among people between 30 to 69 years of age tobacco kills one out of every two people who smoke it. It increases the risk of 24 deadly diseases including cancers, heart disease, strokes and bronchitis the World Bank estimates that within 30 years, tobacco will be the leading cause of death in the world, killing 10 million people per year smoking can cause impotence in men turn their hair grey or make them bald . It also messes up peoples' enjoyment of sex half of all teenagers who take up the habit will be killed by it one quarter of all Americans smoke. Each one smokes around 2538 cigarettes every year women who smoke more than 20 cigarettes per day run four times the risk of getting breast cancer smokers have a greater risk of going blind in later life tobacco advertising of this killer weed is aimed at encouraging young people to smoke by giving them the impression that smoking is cool. I think smoking is stupid! And I expect you do too after reading all this sad stuff. Smoke and stuff from factories, cars and trucks This is the pollution everybody sees and knows about. You can't miss it, can you? Every time you go anywhere in a car or walk in the street, you smell the stink of exhaust fumes. Sometimes the exhaust fumes get so thick they form a sort of fog. People call this 'smog' ('smoke' + 'fog' = smog). It's particularly bad in cities like Los Angeles, Mexico City and Delhi. People get sick because of it. Why? Because the smoke, fumes and gases that make up the smog are poisonous. You might even be surprised to know that smoke from barbecues, grills (you know, restaurants and fast food places) and lawnmowers is also pretty bad and makes smogs even worse. What you don't see in this sort of pollution are the poisonous but invisible gases like carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and ozone. Ozone is a poisonous form of the gas we animals all breathe: oxygen. CO, SO2 and NOx are also poisonous. CO2 is a special problem all of its own. This is the gas which is mostly responsible for what people call the 'greenhouse effect'. It is mostly this gas that is making our planet heat up (see my guide to global warming). Another thing you don't see so easily which comes out of factories, farms and cities is the liquid pollution. This is the stuff that gets dumped into streams, into rivers, into lakes and into the seas. Here's the sort of stuff I mean: sewage (phew!) waste chemicals from factories waste oils from industry, cars, road run-off, service stations toxic heavy metals spills and run-off from industrial farms (pesticides, manure slurry, fertilisers) oil from tanker accidents at sea I'm not saying people always do this dumping on purpose, although many do because it's the 'cheap' option. Some of it is accidental and some because people don't know any better. The 'thinking' (if any) goes like this: " If I pour something nasty I want to get rid of into a river, that's okay because it's quickly flushed away by the flowing water... umm, isn't it?" Flushed away, yes, but where to? This is a huge problem for humans. Because people make so much waste, they have to dump it somewhere. Up to now, as long as no-one could see the waste (Not In My Back Yard, shortened to NIMBY), everyone thought it was okay. "Out of sight, out of mind." The planet is only so big and people make so much mess that the whole planet gets dirty. The transport that the flowing rivers, tidal seas and ocean currents provide for human pollution means that it really does get everywhere. The same applies to the air which is why factories have big smoke stacks to dump smoke and fumes into the flowing wind. Then it blows away... but where to? Food and drink 'You are what you eat', some people say. I don't quite agree with that. I eat fish but I'm not a fish. I'm a penguin. Anyway, you get the general idea I'm sure. And if you eat rubbishy food, you can't really expect to grow up strong and healthy. But if you eat good-quality food, you've a good chance of doing so. That's just commonsense really. So how do know what food is good-quality? Unfortunately a lot of food that looks good really isn't good because it contains pollution. Pollution from what? This is all to do with how people make food: growing it on the farm, processing it in factories, storing it and making it ready for you to eat. Here's what happens: Most farmers spray poisonous chemicals on their crops to kill off pests or disease. Many of these poisons remain in small quantities in the food you eat. Some people believe that this may cause cancer and other illnesses. The poisons also pollute both water and air and can kill lots of animals by accident. They also kill a lot of humans by accident every year some farmers grow genetically engineered crops (see my guide about this). Nobody knows what will happen if people eat these foods for a long time. And pollen from these plants gets blown by the wind or carried by insects to other plants which are not modified. This means their seeds may contain some of the genetic modifications. Many people regard this as a very dangerous form of pollution because once it's released, nothing can bring it back again. You can clean up oil spills but you can't clean up genetics spills. Genes are part of life and make living copies of themselves, sometimes millions of them farm animals make lots of pollution from their waste. Some of this gets into water supplies and, because animals like cows belch and fart (whoops sorry- rude word!) a lot of gas called methane, they can actually add to global warming. Methane is a very strong greenhouse gas, much stronger than CO2 trucks and aeroplanes used by people to move food and drink around make a lot of smoke and gas (like CO2 and nitrogen oxides) pollution much of what you eat and drink gets messed around with in big factories to make what is called 'processed food'. Often things are put into food to make it look good but which might be harmful to people: additives, colour and other yukky stuff. Some food like meat often gets contaminated with nasty bugs called bacteria which can make people very sick or kill them. Most things that you drink -- you know, things like soda -- are really just flavoured water. Every drink you gulp down comes in a can or bottle which you then throw away meaning waste and more transport. Sugary drinks make you fat and spoil your teeth. Some of the flavourings and sugar substitutes may be harmful. Nobody really knows for sure Don't worry though. You and your friends and parents really can help to cut this pollution. I've got some great ideas for you at the end of my guide. War Humans are the only animals on the planet that kill each other in large numbers. I don't know why. All other animals live quite peacefully with each other and with the planet. Perhaps it's because humans are so clever. Anyway, millions of people died in wars in the 20th century alone. Quite apart from all the death and suffering, wars also create terrible pollution. Military aircraft use huge amounts of fuel. If an aeroplane (pollution) drops a bomb (more pollution) on an oil refinery, a huge fire starts (yet more pollution). In the last world war, some people dropped nuclear bombs on two cities in Japan, killing hundreds of thousands of people and creating a new sort of pollution: radiation. In recent human wars, some armies used weapons made of a heavy poisonous metal called depleted uranium. These leave behind another sort of radioactive pollution. A few years ago, some people called hippies used to say 'make love, not war'. Sadly, many people seem to prefer to make war, not love. Nasty chemicals Some people talk a lot of rot about chemicals as if all chemicals are bad. Everything is made of chemicals. Some are 'good' while others are 'bad'. Water is a chemical; so is air. Some people think that if something is 'natural', then that's okay. But some natural chemicals are very poisonous: things like sulphur dioxide (that comes out of volcanoes) and ricin (a deadly chemical made by the castor oil plant). The difference between these natural chemical poisons and ones which humans have made is that life has got used to the natural poisons. It's learned to live with them over millions of years. Some life -- certain types of bacteria -- even eats poisons which would kill you or me. But humans have made thousands of new types of poisons, called toxins, which living things have never seen before. Most of these new poisons have been made with good intentions. But they have quite unintended side-effects, and pollute much of the air we all breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink (or in my case, swim in). The best known nasties are persistent organic pollutants (POPs). These include the pesticides farmers spray on food crops. POPs are very stable. They don't go away. Almost no life can break them down and make them harmless. Instead they tend to build up inside animals' bodies. This can mean they can't have babies or it can make them ill or even kill them. Perhaps you've also heard of CFCs? These chemicals are not toxic but they do damage the atmosphere. They destroy a gas called ozone which shields the planet from the strong radiation of the sun. People sensibly agreed to stop making them at a meeting called the Montreal Protocols but the agreement is not working very well. The 'hole' in the ozone shield gets bigger every year, especially over Europe and my home, the Antarctic. Waste People now belong to what they call the 'throwaway society'. Much of what you buy quickly becomes waste - and you just throw it away. This waste means whole armies of trucks collecting and taking it away in all cities everywhere. Some waste gets recycled (used again), but most ends up in garbage dumps so huge they're like mountains. To work out how much waste your family makes, click here! What a waste! From my viewpoint, people are really wasting their 'waste'. When it comes to using stuff taken from the planet, humans think in straight lines: Start >> Grab >> Make >> Use >> Trash >> Finish Grab is mining minerals, soils, forests and fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal). These are resources. Mining is taking something out and not replacing it. Make is producing stuff for people to buy: industry. Use is what people do with what they buy, like driving. Trash is what happens when the stuff is old, unwanted, broken, burned (as in fuels) or outdated. GMUT for short. Result? Fewer resources, growing trash piles and pollution on a grand scale affecting the whole planet: seas, rivers, lakes, lands, air. Every other system on our planet runs in circles - cycles. There's no such thing as trash; no pollution. There's no start and no finish. Everything is constantly being recycled - naturally. One creature's waste becomes another's food. Humans and their industries are the odd animals who don't fit in to the way the planet's systems work. But people are learning. More and more stuff now gets recycled. Great! Not just stinks Had you thought about other sorts of pollution? Can you think of any? Here's some I've thought of: noise – almost everyone hears noise made by people and their machines all the time. How many things that make noise can you think of? Perhaps you like noise. Some people are scared of silence. mess – things people have made. What can you think of that's ugly – eyesores? Industrial things? Roads? Waste tips? anything else? What you can do Okay, you can't go out into the world and clean up the mess and stop all the damage all on your own. But you certainly can do plenty of things to help. And remember, Kids like you all around the world are waking up to what's going on -- you are not alone! Tell your family, tell your friends. Talk about it with your teachers at school find out more. You could start with my links section (click the link at the bottom of this page). Remember that not everything you see, read or hear will be the truth. The people who are making a lot of money out of pollution don't want you to find out the truth. They don't want to be stopped join a group who are trying to stop pollution. Again, see my links section recycle as much 'waste' as you can. Or don't buy stuff which becomes waste (like packaging from takeaway food). You can use real plates made of china and forks made of steel thousands of times. Plastic plates and cutlery last once and then become waste if you want to go somewhere, try and walk or use a bicycle. Cars are big polluters see if you can buy food which has been grown locally. Is there a local farm shop? Some farmers deliver vegetables and other foods. Buying local foods means almost no transport is needed some shops and supermarkets will deliver things to your home. You can even shop online. This means your family doesn't need to drive to pick up your food. One supermarket truck or pickup can deliver stuff to dozens of families… saving dozens of car journeys. Think about it if you can, try and get organic food. Organic food does not contain any kind of pesticide or use chemicals that harm the land, air or water. Animals raised in organic farms are treated more kindly than in factory farms try and avoid processed food and drink. Use fresh food whenever you can and don't eat out so much. Cooking can be fun, you know! Have you ever tried it? Barbecues are fun but they make a lot of smoke pollution, so keep them for really special occasions grow your own vegetables. Believe it or not, this can be fun too! You don't need much space. You can even grow things in pots on the window ledge or in a sunny spot inside if you have space, make compost from waste food (vegetable peelings and so on). Worms eat all this rotting stuff and make it into a sort of rich soil, very good for plants don't buy things that you don't need or that you end up throwing away in a couple of weeks Water pollution NEMO WATER POLLUTION WORDS AIR POLLUTION AIR POLLUTION 2