Effects of Toxic Waste on the Environment

With the industrialization of most countries in the world, waste products are being released into our ecosystems. This increase in pollution has a number of negative effects on plant, animal and human life.

What is Toxic Waste?

• This is a blanket term that covers by-products of manufacturing, farming, city septic systems, construction, automotive garages, laboratories, hospitals, and other such industries.

Toxic forms

• These toxic substances can be liquid, solid, sludge. They can be otherwise innocuous, or harmless, items that have become contaminated or contain chemicals, heavy metals, radiation or pathogens. Pathogens are any disease causing virus, bacterium or other micro-organism.

What can it do to our world?

• Many strange and unnatural mutations in animals can be linked to toxic waste. Global warming finds one source in hazardous waste and dangerous chemicals being released into the air. Ecosystems that depend upon even temperatures are thrown into disarray resulting in plant and animal species dwindling in number or becoming extinct.

  Humans too are impacted not only by the change in the temperatures, climate adjustment and animal loss but directly by the waste. In 1989 a school in Hudson County, New Jersey, was shut down. The students had suffered from excessive exposure to a chemical called chromium.

Symptoms

• Chromium chemical symptoms can include: sinusitis, nasal septum perforation, allergic and irritant dermatitis, skin ulcers, respiratory irritation, bronchitis, asthma.

  Here are definitions of the terms:

  Sinusitis: inflammation of a sinus or the sinuses.
  Nasal septum perforation: a hole in the vertical tissue that separates the nostrils.
  Allergic and irritant dermatitis: inflammation of the skin.
  Skin ulcers: a sore on the skin, with broken or unbroken skin
  Respiratory irritation: breathing system reaction to adverse foreign stimuli
  Bronchitis: acute or chronic inflammation of the membrane lining of the bronchial
  tubes.
  Asthma: constricting of the bronchial tubes characterized by sudden, recurring
  attacks of difficult breathing, wheezing and coughing.

Common storage

• All rules for hazardous waste in the United States are created and enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency or EPA.

  Sealed containers that are buried are the most common. The type of container depends upon the type of waste to be stored. All must have a lid that seals, free from leaks and have a clean outside surface.

  Some waste such as soil containing lead is allowed to remain buried under a sealing layer of hard clay. This is because it is not likely to migrate. Migrate refers to a substance that gets carried in runoff, evaporates or is otherwise moving from a fixed location.

  Many cities in the United States have designated facilities that charge disposal fees. There may also be restrictions on when household waste of a hazardous nature may be collected.