Pollutant sources

To speak of the main pollutants of our habitat and environment, we sort the issue, since a very wide range of elements that can be considered that are affecting the natural cycle of life on Earth in the air we breathe, the water we drink and foods we consume as primary needs of human beings.

Air pollution is caused by the discharge of different ways of gases toxic to humans, who become part of an artificial or unnatural the air we need to live. While our agency allows a significant degree of modification of the natural composition of this element, the continuous supply of toxic gases violates this capacity may lead to our death.

Each year, industrial countries generate billions of tons of pollutants. The common air pollutants are widely dispersed and the carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, ozone, carbon dioxide or particulate matter. The level is usually expressed in parts per million, ie the number of molecules of pollutants per million molecules of air.

There are pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, which are produced by burning coal or oil power plants, which are easy to identify, as well as the CO2 given off by exhausts of combustion engines powered by petroleum fuels, but other hazardous pollutants are formed by reacting in the atmosphere through the action of sunlight and are difficult to detect in its early stage. For example, ozone, a dangerous pollutant that is part of smog, is produced by the interaction of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides under the influence of sunlight and while it is a gas that protects us in the appropriate measure against ultraviolet rays may cause damage excess.

Water is one of the most wanted to eliminate chemicals and waste of all kinds. Industrial effluent and sewage discharges without processing are the main agents of pollutants, but also the dumping of radioactive waste and industrial waste that can not be processed on the ground, precisely because of its highly polluting oceans end up in compromising the future of world, which today make you give the alias "junkyard in the world."

Besides the problem of contamination of drinking water, have lost a natural and necessary for human life, so low at this stage of civilization, there is also contamination of seafood then consumed in the diet with the consequent transfer of toxic elements.

The soil on the other hand suffers the constant pollution of various industrial operations are performed with toxic chemicals, mining highlighting the use of heavy metals, paper with the use of chlorine in the manufacture of white paper, pesticides and used festicidas openly in crop agriculture.

We want to mention a point of order the famous list of the "dirty dozen", established in Stockholm by the UN, an important step to eradicate chemical compounds used in various activities whose toxicity has been scientifically proven with facts and unfortunately in humans. The Dirty Dozen is composed of aldrin, chlordane, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex, toxaphene, polychlorinated biphenyls, DDT, dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls.