War

“Warfare is inherently destructive of sustainable development. States shall therefore respect international law providing protection for the environment in times of armed conflict and cooperate in its further development, as necessary.” – 1992 Rio Declaration


The application of weapons, the destruction of structures and oil fields, fires, military transport movements and chemical spraying are all examples of the destroying impact war may have on the environment. Air, water and soil are polluted, man and animal are killed, and numerous health affects occur among those still living.

The continent of Africa alone is rife with Civil Wars. These wars are mainly fought in densely populated regions, over the division of scarce resources such as fertile farmland. There are many environmental effects, such as biodiversity loss, famine, sanitation problems at refugee camps and over fishing.

In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, over 200,000 people were either killed instantly or eventually. Besides the direct casualties, the environment took a severe hit as well, affecting those who survived the initial bombing. The blasts caused air pollution from dust particles and radioactive debris flying around, and from the fires burning everywhere. Many plants and animals were killed in the blast, or died moments to months later from radioactive precipitation. Radioactive sand clogged wells used for drinking water, thereby causing drinking water a problem that could not easily be solved. Surface water sources were polluted, particularly by radioactive waste. Agricultural production was damaged; dead stalks of rice could be found up to seven miles from ground zero. In Hiroshima the impact of the bombing was noticeable within a 10 km radius around the city, and in Nagasaki within a 1 km radius.

Obviously, this is an extreme example. We have never seen anything like the A-bomb since. But all wars and act of wars not only take its toll on the people it is meant to harm, but the environment is irreparably damaged for some time.

"In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose."–J. Robert Oppenheimer

There have been countless wars in world history, so it would be futile to try to describe the environmental impact each of them had here. But, in an example closer to home, the World Trade Center bombing in 2001 had serious environmental impacts that we are still reading about, ten years later. Many people present at the WTC at the time of the attacks are still checked regularly, because of long-term effects. It is thought there may be an increased risk of development of mesothelioma, which comes from exposure to asbestos. Airborne dioxins in the days and weeks after the attack may increase the risk of cancer and diabetes. Infants of women that were pregnant on September 11 and had been in the vicinity of the WTC at the time of the attack are also checked for growth or developmental problems.

I’m not going to make any political stands here. Wars are necessary when governments feel they have no other choice. Our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been a hot-button topic for a decade. But this blog’s purpose is to highlight the causes of environmental issues, and war certainly does a lot of damage to the environment. I doubt there is a eco-friendly way to fight a war, and you don’t need to hear from me what kind of impacts war can have on people.

I’m also not a big science-fiction guy, but I think if aliens decided to come to Earth and take over, humans would quickly see how dumb it was to be fighting each other for so long.


"Drafted to go to Vietnam

To fight communism in a foreign land.

To preserve democracy is my plight

Which is a God...Given...Right.

Greenery so thick with hidden enemies

Agent Orange is sprayed on the trees.

Covering me from head to toe

Irate my eyes, burns through my clothes.

Returned home when my tour was done

To be told "You have cancer, son".

Agent Orange is to blame

Government caused your suffering and pain.

Fight for compensation is frustrating and slow

Brass cover-up, not wanting anyone to know.

From cancer many comrades have died

Medical Insurance have been denied.

Compensation I now receive

My health I hope to retrieve.

In Vietnam , I was spared my life

Just to be stabbed with an Agent Orange knife" Yvonne Legge, 2001



"We will live in the death smog for a while,

breathing the dust of the dead,

the 3 thousand or so who turn to smoke,

as the giant ashtray in Lower Manhattan

continues to give up ghosts.

The dead are in us now,

locked in our chests,

staining our lungs,

polluting our bloodstreams.

And though we cover our faces with flags

and other pieces of cloth to filter the air,

the spirits of the dead aren’t fooled

by our masks." Lawrence Swan, 05-10-2001

“My hands are tied

The billions shift from side to side

And the wars go on with brainwashed pride

For the love of God and our human rights

And all these things are swept aside

By bloody hands time can't deny

And are washed away by your genocide

And history hides the lies of our civil wars” – Guns ‘n Roses (Civil War)

Source: http://www.lenntech.com/

Air Pollution

Air pollution is the presence of one or more unwanted substances in the air. Air pollutants have negative impacts on humans, animals, plants and air quality.

The four most frequent categories of air pollutants are sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, Volatile Organic Compounds (VOS) and small dust particles (aerosols.)

Like most pollution, air pollution is mostly caused by human activity, such as industries, traffic, energy generation and agriculture. When large concentrations of these substances are emitted into the air, this negatively affects ecosystems, materials and public health.

Examples of the effects on the environment include:

Acid deposition – which causes more metals to dissolve in water and pollute the water, which kills the aquatic life.

Eutrophication – occurs when there is an increase in plant nutrients in water. The word “nutrients” sounds like a good thing, but this can cause certain plants and algae to grow so much, it blocks the sunlight and absorbs a lot of oxygen, which causes a disruption to the ecosystem.

Smog – has an effect on plants and animals. In people, this can cause eye and respiratory damage.

Ozone loss – Ozone is very important for all life on earth, because it absorbs harmful UV-B radiation from the sun. When the ozone concentrations decrease, a UV-B radiation may reach the earth. This radiation damages DNA and causes skin cancer. The radiation can also damage the human immune system, causing humans to become more susceptible to infections as well as cataract and nearsightedness. Ozone loss also affects plants, because it can decrease growth and photosynthesis. Primary crops, such as rice, corn and sunflower are susceptible to this, as well as trees. UV-B radiation also wreaks havoc on aquatic life up to twenty meters under the water surface. It is damaging to species, such as plankton, fish larvae, shrimps, crabs and seaweeds. Phytoplankton forms the basis of the aquatic food chain. When radiation causes phytoplankton to decrease in number it will affect the entire ecosystem.

Air pollution has been a problem long enough for humans to have at least developed a way to deal with it. Air pollution is easily detected using computer models. Wind speed, wind direction, temperature, air humidity and cloudiness are all ways to predict air pollution, which is beneficial to the inhabitants of certain places that may be affected by the pollution.

What do you tell a class of 4th graders about air pollution? That it’s bad? I think if you can detail some of the dangers of air pollution, without sounding too preachy, you can create enough awareness to pique their interest to learn ways to combat air pollution. A guest speaker, field trip and videos would be a great place to start. From there, if just a handful of kids are passionate enough about the environment and, specifically, air pollution, and feel like they want to spend their lives pursuing it as a career you’ve done a good job.

Source: http://www.lenntech.com

Population Growth

Population growth is another environmental issue. “Issue” is the word we have used instead of “problem” because it has a better connotation. When we talk about pollution, whether it is air or water, it is a problem. I’m not sure population growth is a problem, per se, but it is something that figures into every equation when we talk about the environment.

I have decided on this topic because there is an article in this week’s Time for Kids that we read today in class. The students automatically drew a correlation between the population’s growth and the impact on natural resources. As of this year, the world’s population was expected to pass 7 billion people. That is more than double that of just 50 years ago. In another fourteen years, that number is expected to reach 8 billion.

Population growth increases at an exponential rate. Many factors play into the rise of the population, including better medicines that are keeping people alive longer, better prenatal care, which decreases the number of miscarriages and stillbirths, and better fertility drugs for those who have trouble conceiving.

Since I’m taking STEM classes, this is an excellent opportunity to incorporate math into the topic, particularly reading a graph (like the one above). A simple line graph can show us the increase of the world’s population since 1900. If we follow the pattern, we can see an obvious increase and project what the next numbers on the graph will be in fifty years, 100 years, or even later than that.

I asked my student’s if they ever didn’t finish their dinner, and had their parent say, “There are many starving people in the world, so eat your food!” Mine too. Now that I’m the parent (of a finicky five-year old girl) I’m always about to say it. But this is a big deal if the population continues to grow. Experts believe that there is enough food per country to feed everyone, but that we need to work harder to create less waste.

One of my students raised their hand and brought up natural resources. I served up the questions and they hit them out of the ballpark, including:

• If there are more people in the world, hence more people driving in the world, how does that affect the atmosphere?


• If more people need more paper to write on, what does that mean for trees?


• If we cut down more trees, what happens to all the extra carbon dioxide not getting absorbed?

If a family gets big, they can simply add an extension to their house. There is nothing we can do to make the earth bigger, so we need to be vigilant in protecting our resources and limiting our waste as much as possible.

Source: Time for Kids, lenntech.com

Fossil Fuels

Fossil fuels are a popular topic these days when we discuss environmental issues. Fossil fuels are non-renewable energy sources that we are running out of. This will cause prices to rise and animosity and stress to become more prevalent.

The three types of fossil fuels are natural gas, oil, and coal. We use these fuels because they are cheaper and more effective than the alternatives at this point. People knew as far back as the Industrial Revolution that these fuels wouldn’t last forever and that they weren’t good for the atmosphere, but it wasn’t their problem at the time.

The real issue of fossil fuels isn’t so much that we will run out of them someday, but that they are terrible for the environment. Burning fossil fuels is responsible for greenhouse gas accumulation, acidification, air pollution, water pollution, damage to land surface and ground-level ozone. Pollutants, such as sulfur and nitrogen, are naturally present in fossil fuel structures are released. Coal is the number one contributor of emissions to the atmosphere, followed by oil, which may end up in soil or water in raw form. Natural gas does not release as much carbon dioxide because of its methane structure.

I have done lessons on fossil fuels in my classroom. I focus on the terms “renewable” and “non-renewable” and have pictures of each on my SmartBoard. I have students drag the pictures into the appropriate categories. I teach them about alternate forms of energy (renewable) in the forms of wind and solar energy. We basically get all our energy from the sun, so it’s a matter of harnessing that energy.

A lesson we can do from that point is a Pro and Con of the types of energy. As bad as non-renewable energy sources are, we use them for a reason. But the cause and effect lessons won’t be lost on 4th graders: if we have a limited supply of something and keep using it, what do you think will eventually happen? We read recently about the cocoa bean being in shorter supply because of diseases to trees in South America. My students know a bit about supply and demand and understand that if there isn’t a lot of something, the prices go up. Last year, we read about electric cars in Time for Kids. I asked them if they noticed how their parents reacted every time they had to get gas. They all responded the same way; how their parents were constantly complaining about gas prices.

As an elementary school teacher, it’s all about creating awareness of issues like this and tying it in to how it affects the kids’ lives. I said to them, “you might not be the one paying for gas now, but the more money your parents spend on gas, the less money they’ll have to spend on you.”

source: http://www.lenntech.com/

Drinking Water Pollution

It’s funny how not-too-long-ago, bottled water was the new thing. I laughed when I saw how many people insisted on drinking bottled water and considered them foolish. I had been drinking tap water my whole life and everything was fine with me, so why pay money for water?

Now I buy bottled water, and refill them with my Brita. Subconsciously, I feel it is a “safer” water or “purer” water, but who really knows. I guess, depending on where you get your tap water, this might be true, and it could also be the exact opposite. However, after learning more about potential pollutants of drinking (tap) water, I almost feel safer drinking water that has gone through numerous steps of the purification process. These potential pollutants are:

· Coliform Bacteria – often caused by barnyard runoff, and can be indicative of pathogens.
· Yeasts and Viruses – can cause diarrhea, vomiting, stomach cramps and fever, and that’s for people with good immune systems.
· Nitrate – can reduce your blood’s capacity to carry oxygen; especially dangerous for infants.
· Lead – can lead to lead poisoning, which affects development in young people.
· Legionella – can cause flu-like symptoms, or worse, legionellosis, which can be fatal.

I’m not going to talk about the purification process here, but I would with my class. I teach fourth graders, so if I brought this kind of stuff up to them, they wouldn’t even brush their teeth with tap water! I wouldn’t scare them into all the pollutants that can get into the drinking water, even in theory. By now, they are all used to bottled water, as evidenced by how many of them bring bottled water to school.
But a rule of thumb I like to go by is if I find it interesting, I think I can make my class find it interesting. I would be interested to know how water is purified before it gets bottled into, say, a Poland Spring bottle. This would best be done with a field trip so they can see it and understand it for themselves. I wouldn’t attempt to try any kind of “water purification” experiment or demonstration myself in the classroom (at least not at this point) because I don’t feel confident enough to be able to pull it off.

source: www.lenntech.com

Flooding

With Global Warming and the ice caps melting, a natural effect can be increased flooding. A bad enough flood may kill hundreds, even thousands, of people and can leave thousands more homeless. Luckily, measures can be taken to minimize the damage of floods.

One way to minimize a flood’s potential harm is with a flood barrier. London has the Thames Flood Barrier, which consists of concrete piers, with ten separate rotating steel floodgates positioned across the Thames River. The Environmental Agency operates the barrier. When it no longer gives the protection needed because of rising water levels, the barrier is raised, and river walls are strengthened. This is important to London, because they are susceptible to floods.

Another way to combat a flood’s potential harm is with floodplains. This is a process (or non-process, if you will) of leaving land uncultivated. Houses in the adjacent land are protected from flooding because it only occurs on the floodplain. Wetlands are a type of floodplain. Think of them as natural sponges that trap floodwater. One advantage to Wetlands is it reduces the cost of flood protection measures such as dams and levees.

If a flood has already occurred, and the dikes are threatened, sandbagging can be implemented. This is simply (easy for me to say) taking bags upon bags of sand (or clay or silt), and use it as a barrier to prevent water from flowing through. It’s almost like a reinforced dike.

How would I use this in my classroom? This sounds like a great opportunity to utilize the E in STEM. To engineer something that can prevent water from ruining something. It would have to come near the end of the school year (once testing is over) and we have extra time on our hands. It would seem like a simple enough idea, but would take a lot of preparation and safety measures. There are a lot of wires and outlets in my room that would have to be covered or removed. Water can get all over the place. In fact, since this would be done at the end of the year, it might be a nice excuse to take the class outside and have them work with the earth. Food for thought as we move forward.

Source: www.lenntech.com

Volcanic Eruptions

An environmental issue that has not been discussed in class is Volcanic Eruptions. Since this is a natural disaster, we don’t think of it as a problem per se, because it is not within our control.

Still, it does have some negative consequences to our environment.
There are a number of toxic gases present in pyroclastic (ashes, gases and rock) flow. It contains carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide gas as well as hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen fluoride, carbon monoxide and volatile metal chlorides.

The carbon dioxide emitted from volcanoes adds to the natural greenhouse effect (warming of the earth’s surface) and the sulfur dioxides turn into sulfuric acids, which is the leading cause of acid rain. There are also sulfate aerosols which form ozone destruction materials.

Last year I had a “natural disasters” theme in my class and we did projects based around certain types of disasters, with volcanoes being one of them. The “volcano group” researched how a volcano erupts, different types of tornadoes, as well as researched famous volcanoes and wrote about what a nearby community must do to prepare for a volcano eruption. As far as the negative impact on the environment, I can’t say we did anything specific related to that, but the more the students learn about these dangerous gases and the effects on the atmosphere, the easier it will be for them to understand down the road.

Going back to the fact that this is not a man-made occurrence, I wondered if I should pick this as a topic. But then I realized that if there are dangerous things going on in our atmosphere that we can’t control, it makes the things we do control even more important to control.

Source: http://www.lenntech.com/

Acid Deposition

Acid deposition (in forms of rain, mist and fog) is a world-wide environmental concern. It doesn’t matter the pollutants originate, because the weather can bring it to neighboring countries.







Acid deposition is comprised of 70% sulfuric acid and 30% nitric acid. Sulfuric acid comes mostly from power stations, car exhausts, melting processes and home fires. Nitric acid is mainly a result of fossil fuels.




Acid deposition can have many negative environmental impacts, including, but not limited to:




· Choking plant leave pores
· Corroding stone and brick walls on monuments and buildings
· Corroding paper and rubber objects
· Altering soil chemistry (which decreases the amount of soil nutrients)
· Altering the chemical balance of lakes and streams (which can affect the ecosystems and drinking water)
· Cause difficulty for mammals to breathe.




Luckily, the world-wide community has recognized acid deposition as a serious enough problem, where action has been taken to minimize the damage. The Sulfur Emissions Reduction Protocol was enacted in 1979, and the Convention on Long-Range Trans-boundary Air Pollution was conducted in 1983.




As a fourth grade teacher, I can do lessons on cause and effect as it pertains to acid deposition. The word “deposition” is a good vocabulary word, meaning “where something is left”. Children can quickly understand that when noxious gasses enter the atmosphere from a particular smoke stack, the polluted air will travel. The air itself doesn’t care where it goes. By educating our young people on these dangers (especially if we focus on the bullet points above) they can begin to work on developing ways to solve some of these problems when they are older.




As a society, we have begun to address some of these causes of acid deposition. The president talks about lessening our dependency on fossil fuels. There are more electric cars on the road, although there is still work to be done to improve them. Personally, I don’t have a fireplace, and I know people who have them love them, but they should think twice about releasing the pollution into the air.




Source:

www.lenntech.com