Environmental Problems Due to Human Activities

The 2010 census counted more than 308 million people living in the United States generating more than 4 pounds of garbage per person, per day -- that's over 1.2 billion pounds of garbage annually. The earth is made up of 70 percent water and there is not a single drop that is not polluted in one way or another. In 2009, plastics comprised approximately 60 percent of ocean debris, consisting primarily of plastic bags, food containers, cigarettes, plastic bottles and bottle caps. These items can travel thousands of miles, polluting the water and killing marine life along the way.

Automobiles

• We have an unwavering love affair with automobiles, but cars are only one of the primary causes of air pollution. Gas-powered engines emit exhaust that is discharged through the tailpipe directly into the air. The exhaust, a pollutant in itself, mixes with atmospheric gases to form secondary pollutants. Secondary pollutants are created when exhaust is exposed to sunlight where it reacts with oxygen to create topospheric ozone. In addition to exhaust, the products required for automobiles to run properly cause pollution, too, like car batteries, discarded oil, tires and antifreeze. Ozone is a respiratory irritant that adversely affects lung function in the elderly and people with asthma.

Personal Watercraft

• The National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara, studied 17 different human activities that pollute the water. Their findings revealed that every spot had been adversely affected by people. The study showed human activities to be responsible for a reduction in sea animals and fish, and have damaged the coral and rocky reefs, seagrass beds, mangroves and seamounts and shelves.

  Tahoe Regional Planning Agency banned Jet Ski use on the lake because of the amount of pollution they deposited into the water. In a 1999 study, the Agency found these watercraft were responsible for depositing unburned fuel as well as toluene and benzene into the water, which killed plankton and severely polluting the water. There are more than 1 million registered personal watercrafts and their inefficient, two-cycle engines deposit more than 30 percent of their fuel into the water with each use.

Plastic Containers

• Everywhere you look, you see someone with a plastic bottle of water. Unfortunately, the plastic is made from fossil fuel and close to 30 billion bottles of water are purchased in the United States yearly. It takes 17 million barrels of crude oil to make those 29 billion bottles of water. That amount of crude oil could run 1 million automobiles for a year.

  A lot of focus has been on drinking water bottles, but other plastics leach into the environment and cause pollution and serious health risks. People don't give much thought to the plastic bags and wrapping paper we use to freeze or store leftovers, or the plastic used in food packaging. A very common chemical used in the production of plastic is Bisphenol-A, which has been found to cause a number of health problems like ADHD, breast cancer, diabetes, erectile dysfunction and heart disease.

Aerosol Sprays

• Aerosol sprays were actually invented by the Department of Agriculture in the 1920s so that soldiers could kill malaria-carrying mosquitoes during World War II. By the mid-1970s, there was concern about the depletion of the ozone layer; this was directly linked to the use of chlorofluorocarbons, which were used as a propellant in spray cans. Chlorofluorocarbons were eliminated in the late 1970s and have not been used since. Other propellants replaced chlorofluorocarbons, like hydrocarbons and the compressed gas, nitrous oxide. Even though aerosol sprays no longer contribute to breaking down the ozone layer, the hydrocarbons and nitrous oxide still release VOCs into the atmosphere and contribute to smog at ground level.