Environmental Impacts Essay Example for Free

Environmental Impacts EssayThere is a fully grown gap between highly- certain and developing countries in terms of the attention given to environmental concerns. As a general rule, developing nations place the environment low on their list of priorities. Managing the ecosystem takes a rear end oceant to economic advancement and industrialization, which be seen as more pressing needs. On the other hand, developed nations generally take a more proactive role in environment management because they bedevil the budget and the technology to do so.They have also recognized that further economic development abide no longer do without sustainable environmental practices (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2001). Stemming from this basic difference of priorities is the great dissimilarity between the environments impacts on the wellness of people living(a) in the First dry land and those living in the threesome World. However, it is simplistic to assume that t he former be invariably healthier than the latter. turn it is true that developing nations use less environmentally-friendly practices, the sheer level of industrialization and commercialization in developed countries sometimes means that these countries produce farthermost more pollution and thus create more health problems for their citizens. A comprehensive assessment of the interaction between human health and the natural environment is non possible given the length of this paper. Nevertheless, this essay will explore some differences between First and Third World nations with regards to two selected major public health issues, namely, air pollution and water pollution.Air befoulment Palo and Solberg (1999) have identified carbon dioxide as the or so abundant greenhouse gas produced today, and they cite it as the about critical contri hardlyor to global warming, a phenomenon that poses a grave threat to human health and security. Confalioneri et al. (2007) detailed the e xact nature of this threat in the Inter presidential termal Panel on Climate Changes Fourth Assessment Report. Global warming first affects humanity by changing weather patterns. organic temperature swings, irregular precipitation, rising sea levels, more powerful storms, droughts and heatwaves have all become more frequent as a direct result of global warming. These phenomena in turn negatively affect the timbre and quantity of food, water and air available to human populations. These phenomena inflict a great amount of damage on human settlements and infrastructure as well. The worldwide spikes in malnutrition, infectious diseases, and deaths from extreme weather events are all directly proportional to the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.The IPCC also warned that developing societies were at the superior risk to these environmental pressures. Among these developing nations, Douglas et al. (2001) cited coral reef atolls and reef islands as the most prone because th eir judge of land loss are dramatically impacted on by incremental rises in sea level. They cited the quickly disappearing land of the Maldives, the Marshall Islands, and some low-lying Japanese islands as some of the most alarming manifestations of global warming.They added that rise in sea levels has led not plainly to escalating land loss, but also to the contamination of underground water sources in nations such as Israel, Thailand and island states in the Pacific and the Caribbean. The combine loss of arable land and potable water caused by global warming does not all lead to malnutrition and disease but also to social pressures such as overcrowding in cities, which increase the version on the human populations health.In addition, developing countries lack the infrastructure to protect their populations from the progressively negative repercussions of climate change. In nations such as India, Bangladesh and Burma, relief efforts for victims of increasingly destructive st orms are routinely slowed down by the insufficient facilities, resources and personnel. However, it should be noted that developed countries are not immune to these calamities. The uncommon destruction wrought by Hurri shadowere Katrina on a major U. S.city serves as a puritanic reminder of the vulnerability of First World nations to extreme weather events. Cooper and Block (2007) are only two of many Americans who have accused the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of universe prepared for natural disasters on paper, only to be caught flat-footed when Hurricane Katrina struck the city of New siege of Orleans on August 29, 2005. Cooper and Block also blame FEMAs ineptitude for the unsanitary living conditions thousands of survivors had to endure for several weeks after the disaster.To this day, New Orleans has not fully recovered from the hurricane. Carbon dioxide emissions are not the only major source of air pollution. Other chemicals such as sulfur dioxid e, newton oxides and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) also pose significant health problems. As zest (2004) has underlined, these primary pollutants are doubly hazardous because they can react photochemically to create secondary pollutants, and these secondary pollutants can also bear with further chemical reactions which result in even deadlier substances.This type of air pollution is one of the most critical problems in China today, especially in the capital of Beijing. As one of the most rapidly developing countries in the world, China has seen an enormous surge in demand for fossil fuels to feed its factories and the motorized transport of its citizens. In addition, China has much lower emissions standards for its automobiles compared to other countries, leading to more pollution produced per vehicle. Tang cited Song et al.(2003), who noted the sharp increase in respiratory diseases among Chinese living in urban areas, as well as many residents complaints about the chronic l ack of visibility in Beijing. at a time again, these health problems are not limited to developing countries. In fact, this type of air pollution is sagaciously felt in megacities such as Los Angeles and London, where air quality is severely compromised by the millions of automobiles and the factories located in and around the city limits.However, developed countries are taking definite steps to decrease the pollution, with one famous exception. As Al Gore observed in the documentary An Inconvenient Truth (2006), the United States lags far behind its European counterparts when it comes to enforcing more environmentally friendly emissions standards for its automobiles. The discrepancy has reached the point where some American vehicles can no longer be sold in European countries because they no longer meet government environment safety standards.