Pollution’s Deadly Harvest
WHEN musical humorist Tom Lehrer sang about pollution back in the 1960’s and advised visitors to the United States not to drink the water or breathe the air, it was meant to be funny.
Nowadays nobody is laughing. After all, pollution is not really a laughing matter. Our air is polluted by heating and industrial emissions, engine exhaust, and radioactive fallout; our water by chemical and oil spills; and our ground by acid rain and toxic-waste dumps. There was a time when names like Chernobyl, Love Canal, Amoco Cadiz, and Bhopal would have been met by no more than puzzled faces. Now they call forth worried looks. Civilization has gone astray, threatening millions of people with the dubious alternatives of lingering illness or sudden death.
Pollution is particularly terrifying because more often than not it is unseen. Air may appear fresh and pure and yet be radioactive; food and water may appear wholesome and yet be full of chemical poisons! Of a truth, pollution is often an invisible killer.
Pollution’s Visible Harvest
Although pollution may be invisible, its deadly harvest is not. You can see it wherever you look: people dying of cancer and respiratory ailments; defaced buildings and monuments; decimated animal and plant life; rivers depleted of fish; dead and dying forests.
Now another phenomenon has made its appearance, seemingly bearing pollution’s trademark. Scientists have discovered a hole in the ozone layer surrounding the earth. And it is getting bigger. Some feel that chlorofluorocarbon pollution is apparently a factor, resulting from extensive use of aerosol sprays. Will the damaging of this ozone layer, which helps filter out harmful solar radiation, cause an upsurge in skin cancer? Or perhaps cause something even worse?
Pollution has grown to such catastrophic proportions that something must be done—and quickly—if global tragedy is to be avoided. A greater awareness of the seriousness of the problem has led to the formation of ecology groups and even helped catapult new political parties into positions of power. In the Federal Republic of Germany, for example, the ecology-oriented and appropriately named Greens captured 8.3 percent of the popular vote in the January 1987 federal elections.
Do we dare hope that human concern can be successfully transferred into positive action capable of ridding our planet of pollution, the invisible killer? Can we protect ourselves personally from its deadly designs?
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Our Polluted Planet
Brazil: “People who live [in Cubatão] call it ‘The Valley of Death.’ . . . The trees and soil are lifeless and, in increasing numbers, children are born dead or dying. What is alive is pollution.”—Latin America Daily Post.
China: “Most northeastern Chinese cities [suffer] from air pollution so pervasive that by late afternoon only hardened locals can walk the streets without burning lungs and watering eyes.”—Time.
Denmark: “Only a series of cold, windy summers with frequent northwesterly storms can save the Danish coast from an ecological catastrophe. . . . [In one area, because of the] lack of oxygen, fish and sea life will be unable to survive.”—Basler Zeitung.
Federal Republic of Germany: “A poisonous mixture spilled into the Rhine [from a chemical warehouse fire near Basel, Switzerland], destroying 15 years of Rhine rehabilitation [and tons of fish]. . . . The Sandoz accident has caused serious ecological damage to 280 kilometers [170 mi] of the Rhine.”—Der Spiegel.
Soviet Union: “The reactor disaster in Chernobyl . . . was a turning point in the history of modern civilization. And it was a catastrophe that will substantially affect us for centuries. . . . That 570 million Europeans, in varying degrees, were, are, and will continue to be exposed to supplemental radioactivity for 300 years will have unforeseeable consequences.”—Psychologie Heute.
United States: “Scientists . . . [have] voiced new concerns that acid rain, in addition to killing lakes, has stunted forest growth and possibly posed a health hazard to humans by contaminating drinking water.”—Maclean’s.