Technology

Some Of Other Pollutants In Ecosystem

Environmental pollution has raised various public health issues over the decades. Indeed, it is due to the industrial revolution that we know and call environmental pollution. The main effects of such industrial toxic nature of the process usually affect vulnerable developing countries. With the rapid technological growth in this era, people are exposed to various compounds of a wide spectrum. Technology brought about apparent simplicity so that thousands of substances produced in various fields appear on the market annually. It has been confirmed that the global production of anthropogenic chemicals has increased from 1 million to 400 million tons each year during the period from 1930 to 2000. According to Euro-Stat data, in the period from 2002 to 2011, more than 50% of the total production of chemicals in the period from 50% consists of substances harmful to the environment. It is very important that more than 70% of these chemicals affect the environment.

Heavy Metals

Heavy metal pollution is one of the major concerns in most countries around the world. Trace metal contamination is important as it can potentially be harmful to human and environmental health. Trace and heavy metals are now gaining recognition and become an internationally relevant concern with their roles in the soil system. Heavy metal pollution exists and generally persists in being hidden, irreversible. The kind of pollution degrades the atmosphere, food crops, water bodies, and affects health, infiltrating animals and humans in the food chain. Various anthropogenic activities include mining metallurgy, industry, burning fossil fuels and redistribute toxic heavy metals in the environment. These persist for a long time and translate into various components of the environment which includes the biotic segment. These toxins cause accumulation in organs such as kidney and liver with negative effects in domestic or wild animal populations.

The problem with the accumulation of heavy metals occurs within agricultural production causes of soil accumulation which affects crop growing and food quality. Heavy metals are one of the serious health hazards, which can be acquired either directly through inhalation of dust or as water-borne contamination in water or indirectly by consuming such vegetables grown in contaminated soil. Copper and cadmium are examples of cumulative poisons, as they bring about environmental hazards. The metals are described to be highly toxic. Apart from all the effects mentioned above, chronic cadmium poisoning causes pulmonary adenocarcinoma, prostatic proliferative lesions, bone fractures, lung cancer, kidney impairment and hypertension.

Chronic effects of arsenic include cutaneous lesions, skin cancer, peripheral neuropathy and peripheral vascular disease. Other vegetables absorb metals through contaminated soil and also get deposited on various parts of the vegetables through which they are exposed to the polluted environment. Thus human health can be threatened through direct ingestion of soil, inhalation of dust and consumption of food plants grown in soil contaminated with metals. Such exposure to heavy metals may occur due to the nature of work in an industrial, agricultural or pharmaceutical environment. It may also poison children through playing soil contaminated with chemicals. The symptoms of heavy metal poisoning depend on the kind and intensity of the heavy metal released. The patient may complain of vomiting and nausea, stomach pain, diarrhea, headache, sweating and a metallic taste inside the mouth along with abdominal pain.

PAHS (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons)

PAHS are emitted into the environment exclusively due to the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels. Although they are potent environmental pollutants, they are characterized by dangerous mutagenic and carcinogenic potential. PAHs are ubiquitously distributed—not only within the air, soil and water, but also in many foods with which we deal in our daily lives. In addition, PAHs can be transported through storm water runoff which poses a significant risk to the lives of aquatic animals. The identified important anthropogenic sources include: motor vehicle exhausts, heating in power plants, petroleum refineries, combustion of refuse, oil/gasoline spills, barbecue smoke, deposition from sewage, tobacco smoke, and coke production.

PAHs can be associated with metabolic activation in human to mammalian cells, including binding to DNA and tissues, resulting in mutations. PAHSs have recently gained a lot of attention due to various sources. Exposure to humans comes mainly through their diet. It has been documented that the levels of PAHs in various environmental media, including air, soil, sediments, and water, have increased over the last two decades in developing countries as well as in developed countries. Thus, PAHSs are one of the most important environmental problems these days.

Pesticides

Pesticides are chemicals used in agricultural lands, along rail lines, in private gardens, and in other public places. An increased world population will be coupled with an increased demand for food, which will increase pesticide use in crop protection. Although pesticides boost agricultural production, bioaccumulation along the food chain can eventually be dangerous to living things as pesticides cause some adverse effects. Some of the pesticide residues sprayed on crops will remain in agricultural fields, while others will enter the surrounding water, air, and soil. Pesticide residues can last for many years and even travel considerable distances. Pesticide residues remaining in water, sediments, and soil can pose significant environmental hazards, and in many countries, it has been classified as carcinogen pollution. Thus, this great use of chemicals during the last fifty years has also become a serious health threat to mankind.

There have been many reports through pesticide residues found in milk, vegetable, and grain samples. This is accompanied by the increasing trend in farm animals and their products, for example, meat, milk, and eggs of pesticides such as dieldrin, aldrin, chlordane, and heptachlor in India. Other residual pesticides in the environment include all those numerous organochlorine pesticides that can be detected after thirty years and have since been outlawed. Pesticides face other non-target organisms including mankind in the food chain. They accumulate in the body tissues of organisms, causing a variety of health problems. Experimental studies have been conducted and well show that some pesticides were discovered to be an endocrine disruptor, which affects the performance of several hormones within the human body. Scientists established evidence of pesticide exposure and both hormonal regulation imbalances and disturbances of immune system activities. There have been some epidemiological studies that have confirmed the health risk pesticides pose in the last two decades. Many of the topics in this paper are going to be related to the potential effects of pesticide applications on cancer- leukemia, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, along with other categories of solid tumors. Agricultural pesticides are very much in demand in most developing countries. However, a variety of studies have shown that environmental hazards and human health is the most important issue for these countries.

Many people are exposed to pesticides occupationally. More than that, pesticide self-poisoning remains a major problem in public health. The current report for this matter is on 3 million cases per year reporting acute toxicity of pesticide exposure with 250-370,000 deaths per year due to such unconscious use. Taking into account all the above reasons, one can assume that there are serious problems with concerns for pollution with ecosystems and towards human health, as with such a fast-growing aspect of technology involving a wide variety of substances that have such wide-spectrum exposure in people’s lives in recent years.

Conclusion

Technology has given us obvious conveniences, and thousands of chemicals produced in various fields are in the market every year. The quality of life on earth is related to the overall quality of the environment. Due to human activities, all living organisms are adversely affected by emerging pollutants in an ecosystem. Moreover, it includes pesticides, pharmaceuticals, industrial additives and by-products, PAHs, by-products, flame/fire retardants and surfactants, caffeine and nicotine metabolites, and hormones. Exposure to such pollutants has caused significant health problems among living organisms in the ecosystem. Regulation of these compounds will be a difficult task and there is a need for a better understanding of the key properties of the contaminants as well as their distribution and behavior. Therefore, the environmental concentrations of each pollutant should be determined. In addition, the uptake, metabolism, and excretion of pollutants in the relevant species should be studied. To remedy the environmental pollution, future planning will be done that can reduce all the negative effects and pollution, so there is coordination with collaboration through cooperation between these different disciplines to achieve the proper goals.

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