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Environmental Safety Hazards

Environmental safety hazards can be natural or manmade, but the term is usually reserved for dangers caused to the immediate environment by the activities of people. These activities include heavy industry, which can release potentially harmful chemicals--including volatile organic compounds, lead and other toxic substances--into the air, soil and water courses and the extraction of natural resources, such as natural gas and crude oil.

  1. Natural Gas

    • Natural gas is often promoted as a more environmentally friendly fuel than, say, coal, but its extraction from deep beneath the Earth and subsequent processing, in natural gas power plants, creates significant environmental safety hazards. The extraction process, known as hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," involves injecting water, salt and hazardous chemicals deep underground and can result in pollution of ground water. The waste water from hydraulic fracturing operations can contain high levels of salt, which can affect aquatic life and carcinogenic--that is, cancer-causing--substances, such as arsenic and benzene. Natural gas power plants similarly emit the so-called "greenhouse" gas methane, which traps heat in the Earth's atmosphere and contributes to global warming.

    Crude Oil

    • The extraction of crude oil from beneath the Earth's oceans also poses significant environmental safety hazards. The most recent high-profile accident, an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, resulted in the worst accidental oil spill ever, with an estimated 210,000 gallons a day of oil leaking in the sea for months afterward. As of August 2010, the long-term effects of the oil spill remain to be seen, but experts are forecasting untold damage to fragile marine species, fisheries, beaches and wetlands in the area lasting for years to come. Oil pollution floats on the surface of the sea, preventing sunlight from reaching phytoplankton--tiny, free-floating plants that convert inorganic compounds into organic compounds by a process called photosynthesis--and the whole ecosystem starves.

    Chlorofluorocarbons

    • The environmental safety hazards posed by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)--that is, compounds composed of chlorine, fluorine and carbon atoms in various combinations--were first investigated in the 1970s. At that time, CFCs were used in a variety of household aerosol products on the belief they were harmless to the environment. However, they were subsequently discovered to be a cause of depletion of the ozone layer--which protects the Earth from harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun--and hence a hazard to human, animal and plant life.

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