MAN MADE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISISES CAN BE SOLVED BY DEDICATED ENVIRONMENTALISTS ONLY

During the early civilisations human population was not only small in numbers but was mostly distributed in small human habitations generally located along the banks of natural water courses like rivers and lakes. As man developed through the old stone age , new stones age, bronze age and reached the period of industrial revolution. The problems of deforestation, soil degradation, escalating human waste and their consequential environemntal pollution problems including communicable diseases. Due to mining of fuels like coal and minerals like iron and lead new problems of air, water and soil pollution emerged on a large scale. With the growth of urbanisation and industrialisation and their concomitent environmental pollution the water we drink, the air we breath, and the soil we use for growing food crops gradually contaminated to such an extent that the incidents of diseases increased leading to impoverishment of people. Hence people with social concern and humane outlook must come forward to eliminate poverty and disease by improving the purchasing power of the people by promoting ecologically sound methods of development in the fields of agriculture , power generation, industrialisation and urbanisation intune with the scientific and technical advances of the day. We have to restore the degraded relations between man and nature and for this purpose reasonable degree of safety of environment is the basic prerequisite for human progress in the 21st century.

A safe and healthy environment for mankind implies public or communal provisions to ensure that the environment is protected from substances or pathogens that cause damage to human health and to ensure sufficient supplies of natural resources like water, air, land and food essential for healthy life. The problems must be considered at different geographic scales within the habitat, the home, the work place, the neighbourhood, the city, the state, the nation and the world.

At the first and smallest scale, the environmental problems in the home and the work place revolve around the fact that millions of people are exposed to disease producing micro organisms or toxic substances that damage the health of the present and future populations. For instance the pathogens from human excreta that enters into the drinking water supplies and the living areas, the toxic chemicals in the home or work place without any safeguards and the smoke or fumes from domestic cooking, cause serious respiratory problems including cancer. They cause high levels of ill-health, disable men and result in premature death among the poor people. Lack of appropriate waste, disposal methods and drinking water and drainage facilities accelerate the spread of several infectious diseases like cholera, typhoid, jaundice, diarrhoea, dysentery etc. A billion villages do not have safe and adequate drinking water supplies. Crowded housing conditions promote the spread of tuberculosis. One of India’s slums in an industrial belt has reported that 60% children are afflicted with tuberculosis.

A second geographic scale deals with the home or work place neighbourhood where the animal and human excreta and industrial solid wastes are dumped in open places with the result that disease-causing agents like flies, cockroaches and rats spread infectious diseases. Due to absence of drainage or sewers, sullage and sewage stagnates in pools around the homes and such pools become the breeding places for mosquitoes which spread malaria, filarial and brain fevers on a large scale.

The third geographic scale pertains to industrial belts and major townships that have many polluting industries, over-crowded slums, congested streets, ill-maintained automobiles and vehicles that emit much smoke, lead, hydro-carbons, benzo-pyrenes and oxides of nitrogen. The poor women who use wood or coal for cooking in their ill-ventilated huts are exposed to respiratory diseases and cancer. Since most of the industries discharge either partly treated or untreated toxic effluents into the nearby water courses, most the natural water courses have become unfit for drinking and other public uses. Improper siting of highly polluting industries in areas with poor environmental carrying capacities in their air and water regimes is proving hazardous to public health and counter productive to the state. The Bhopal tragedy is a good example which shows that wrong siting and expansion of hazardous industries in violation of the city zoning regulations coupled with negligence in maintaining industrial safety standards inevitably results in avoidable mass scale poisoning of millions of innocent people. The wrong location of a major rock-fill dam like Tehri dam in between the edges of the two crashing Indian and Tibetan tectonic plates in a distractive earthquake zone in Himalayas is going to trigger collapse of the 260 meter high resulting in avoidable killing of millions of people downstream in the Gangetic river basin causing an economic loss of several million homes in the coming 2 to 3 decades. The improper operating conditions of the Chernobyl reactor resulted in catastrophic damage to public health and environment in Europe. The indifferent attitude of scientists, enlightened educationists and the Government to conduct cloud seeding experiments to augment natural rainfall by several countries. The failure of the Governments to control water pollution and air pollution is resulting in poisoned water courses and polluted air masses that are inflicting large scale water borne diseases and air pollution related diseases in millions of human and animal populations. It is high time that the environmentalists from all over the world must exert pressure on the American citizens to tell their president that on this spaceship, earth all the nations and races are merely co-passengers and if the ship is going to be damaged by the escalating ozone depletion and green- house gas impacts it is not only the other nations and races but also the American people who will be equally affected and that the American president by refusing to help in protecting the global environment will be acting like a foolish person who will be cutting the very branch of the tree over which he is sitting. The heads of all the countries in the world must also create environmental awareness among their students and the citizens so that they can work unitedly to save man and nature from all the avoidable environmental backlashes promoted through indiscriminate interactions of man with nature in different eco-systems in different parts of the world. Hence there is an urgent need to create environmental awareness on the causes and effects of environmental pollutants and the methods required to prevent and control environmental pollution for ensuring sustainable development of the present future generation including the biotic and abiotic eco-systems which forms the basic foundation structure for the survival of man and his environment.

My name is P.Subhashini and I graduate in commerce in 1990 from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam. I have a husband by name Tarlana Venkata Rama Rao, he is also a commerce graduate and he is working as a Assistant Manager Finance in a firm in Visakhapatnam. I have one daugher name Sahiti Gupta, son Bharat Bhushan Gupta and both of them are studying in the school. I am working as an Assistant with Prof.T.Shivaji Rao since 1991 on environmental problems and I have been assiting him in preparation and typing of various scientific and technical articles and books on environment. I am interested in promoting the cause of environment.

My nick name is subha, and my e-mail is: [email protected]

Latest Messages

Conversations

Subscriptions

Friends

Researcher 202948 has no Friends

See all Friends

Followers

Researcher 202948 has no Followers

See all Followers

Bookmarks

This user has no Bookmarks

See all Bookmarks