People inhale oil fumes and suffer with asthma. There are a million ways that oil is destroying human lives, but if we get off land and go underwater, oil’s damaging effect on the oceans’ habitats adds the more reasons to strive for the use of alternative energy sources. Since oil began to be used widely as a fuel, there hasn’t been a year without a copious number of oil spill incidents. In the US alone, the Office of Response and Restoration of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) responds to over a hundred oil spills each year (NOAA). While spills happen on both land and water, ocean spills are much more difficult to contain and recover from.
John Wihbey says, “More than 15 million Americans have had fracking operations within a mile of their home.” This may be a small amount of the population, but if fracking continues to grow it will affect more people in the future. Fracking continues to cause problems in communities. When fracking is in the process, it uses millions of gallons of water to operate. The water that is being used for fracking usually comes from wells.
The spill tested the abilities of local, national, and industrial organizations to prepare for, and respond to, a disaster of such magnitude. Environmentalists and saw an opportunity to reap they benefit the punishment that Exxon receive from court. This led to several court cases for Exxon in the span of many years after the spill. According to the New York times, In the subsequent years after the spill, Exxon ended up paying a total of billions of dollars in state and federal lawsuits. Some of them included Alaska landowners, and commercial fishermen and environmental group.
It started on 20th April 2010 and continued for 87 days. It had a huge effect on the marine life and people who were living on coastlines. Due to release of 4.9 million barrels of oil in the sea, even today, the water of Gulf Mexico is contaminated. This has caused psychological, social, cultural and economic long-term and long lasting effects. More importantly, it was caused due to carelessness of government and BP oil owners as they could not manage the fire which led to this enormous disaster.
Dispersants cause the oil to break up into smaller droplets, which become miscible in water. However, these dispersants may result in more ecological harm than good. The chemicals contain nonbiodegradable toxins that can kill fish and migrate great distances. Dispersants also are blamed for the massive oil plumes several hundreds of feet underwater, harmful to all aquatic life, especially fish larvae and filter feeders. Moreover, because of the large volume of oil that has been spilled, the amount of dispersant required and the amount of oil dispersed simply suppresses the problem, rather than solving
Harmful fishing methods are unnecessarily killing turtles, dolphins, and destroying critical habitats. Global warming is increasing the temperature of the ocean water, reducing the generation of the base of the food web, plankton. The reducing of the plankton generation is causing major marine ecosystem change. Pollution is also a significant environmental issue HAL is facing. More oil reaches the ocean each year, a massive amount of oil has been accidently spilled from ships, which in turn is destroying animal and aquatic plant life.
These are the most common causes of accidental exposure to CO. (NHS choices, 2016). There are other possible causes of CO poisoning, they include blocked flues and chimneys, burning fuel or smoking shisha pipes in an enclosed space, a leak or blockage in an exhaust pipe, household cleaning products, spray paint, degreasers or paint removers which contains dichloromethane. (John P. Cunha, 2016).
If our future generation has less food, people from all over the world will suffer from starvation. They will not only suffer from the lack of food, but also from the disease that pollution causes. Our world will become something so frightening and unsuitable for any living
One example is eutrophication which causes a dense growth of plant life leading to the death of marine life from lack of oxygen. This is significant because it has serious, long-term effects. The most remarkable effect of eutrophication is blocking light from reaching the water. Smith and Schindler (2009) investigated that eutrophication prevents the aquatic plants from photosynthesizing and that would lead to reductions in fishes and in the food chain in general. In addition, when fishes die from lack of oxygen, they sink to the bottom, and the microbes that break down the organisms need oxygen to continue this process.
Pollution caused by crude oil and its petrochemical based products disrupt and alter the ecosystem balance. Incomplete combustion of crude oil leads to the production of greenhouse gases which causes acid rain and also accelerates climate change which is already having negative effect on the environment. Crude oil pollution poses a huge risk to the ecosystem if not properly managed because it enters the food web through the plant which is later transferred from one food chain to the other food chain (Sathishkumar et al. 2008). The strong persistence nature of crude oil and its total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) derivatives in air, water and land has attracted much attention from government and environmental stakeholder because accumulation of this pollution in plants and animal tissues leads to toxic, carcinogenic and mutagenic effects which invariably leads to death (Abd-Elsalam et al. 2009; Liu et al. 2010; Das and Chandran,
I think a huge problem in our society is all this talk about the North Dakota Pipeline. In my honest opinion i think it is wrong. There is many people who use the water supply and if something happens with the pipeline it could contaminate the Native Americans water supply. There is many people who count on the water and use it everyday for cooking, cleaning, and drinking. If they go through with the pipeline act it could kill many Native Americans because we need water to survive.
While the quality of water is important for many individuals, wasting water in the matter they do can seem like a major crime. The Congressional Digest also says that fracking is a huge waste of water, and is one of the biggest wastes of water around. Millions of gallons of water are dumped into the soil to pop up these natural gases, and its no longer useful once it comes back. In fact the water that goes down into these holes, does come back up, however once it comes back up with the gas and oil, it is no longer the water we thought it was. The “flow back” or water that returns to the surface, does not always come back up,“…less than 30 percent to more than 70 percent of the original fracture fluid volume” is brought back up, and is rendered unusable (Congressional Digest).
Ryan, you make a good point mentioning that fracking towns set up to mine the gas increase crime, illness, and stress on rural communities. This affects every country with fracking towns, regardless if it is a developing country or not. Stress is an important aspect related to health, and stress increase in the entire population of a fracking town will also increase the illnesses of these people. These illnesses can make the fracking workers decrease on their work efficiency, that can lead to very important mistakes that could harm other or result in mistakes that can contaminate the environment around the fracking towns. I know I sound very pessimistic, but under constant (even permanent) stress (plus illness) people tend to work less efficiently
More recently developed nuclear weapons prove to not only be more violent than those used during the Dresden attack, but to also be more physically and psychologically destructive. Along with the initial effects of the weapon, which destroys both people and property, deadly radiation from the bomb causes lasting health issues for the survivors, such as leukemia and radiation poisoning (Schull). Furthermore, the evacuation and relocation of those who lost homes and jobs in the area of attack would not only be expensive, but would also have significant negative social repercussions - both of the loss of productivity of the workforce during this time, as well as on the mental health of those forced to abandon their homes and
Considering the social and economic unsustainability factors of the Three Gorges Dam, there are also various environmental reasons for the unsustainability of the project. The main motive of the Three Gorges Dam project was to be able to prevent floods that have killed thousands of citizens and has destroyed millions of homes, however the dam will flood over 1,000 acres of farmland and will obliterate over dozens of villages, causing 2 million Chinese people to evacuate their home. (China 's Mega Dam) The irony of this situation is that the problem that the dam is trying to fix, the mass floodings, is in fact making the situation worse by flooding more land, and once all of the land is underwater all of the structures and sewage will pollute the Yangtze river and could eventually cause backup in the dams