Side Effects Of Air Pollution

Humans have been polluting the Earth since the day that they came about. In one way or another, people have been hurting the environment. A thousand years ago, there was pollution by mass burnings. A hundred years ago, there was pollution by coal and industries. Today, there is pollution by plastic and fossil fuels. Pollution has been around for as long as time, but has been getting much worse in the recent hundred years. People have been polluting more than ever, and all this pollution has serious side effects. Pollution is directly related to increasing rates of extinction among animals. Losing even one species of animal can cause an entire ecosystem to collapse. Ecosystems rely on something called biodiversity. The more species of animals, …show more content…
Back in the days before the skies were choked with black smog and criss-crossed with jet airline streams, there was virtually zero air pollution. The only air pollution that tribes of people used to give off was smoke from fires. Today, however, air pollution comes from every home, business, school, hospital, dog house, and motor home. This air pollution causes problems in the atmosphere. Moisture in the air now has these chemicals to stick to, causing acid rain and more intense storms. Ecosystems that are not adapted to this type of weather suffer greatly under these circumstances. Fish may die from the acid rain, animals may die from drinking the water, and birds would be disrupted by changing weather patterns. If these animals die, their ecosystems will lost both stability and …show more content…
This garbage harms animals that rely on those waterways. The aquatic life may mistake a piece of plastic for food and suffocate to death, land animals could drink water that is contaminated by the waste in the water, birds could mistake waste in the water for food. If just one species of fish is removed from an ecosystem, the population of their prey would explode while the population of their predators would drop in a near free fall. Another form of water pollution comes from chemical spills and dumping. If chemical or liquid waste is not treated property before disposal, it can have detrimental effects on the aquatic ecosystem. Another, less notable form of pollution in waterways is heat pollution. Factories that are near a water source may use that water source as a coolant in the factory or building. They use the water directly from the river to cool what they need, and then they deposit the water right back into the river. The only difference between the water before and after all that is the temperature. Unfortunately, there are many species of fish that are very temperature sensitive. Even a change of a few degrees celsius would be enough to kill them (GCMRC). All life on Earth needs water to survive, and this pollution of water by humans is destroying life that relies on