ReducePollution.info

The pollution of human origin, also known as anthropogenic, have many shapes can be local, cultural, occasional, accidental, diffuse, chronic, genetic, voluntary, involuntary, etc. This pollution is a direct or indirect dissemination in the environment of pollutants. They are often unintended by-products of human activity, such as emissions from exhaust pipes. Waste consumer products (packaging, batteries) thrown carelessly in the biophysical environment and the environment, humans, are also a source of pollution very often.

It may also include physical phenomena (like heat, the light, the radioactivity, the electromagnetism, etc), Whose character is unclean or unhealthy because generally dependent on dose, duration of exposure, potential synergies, etc

* Either the nature of “poison” for humans or the environment (eg mercury in the Bay of Minamata; smog London generated by the combination of a natural climatic phenomenon and emissions caused by heating); by extension, the mere unpleasantness, even harmless, may be sufficient to invoke the term of pollution where the word “nuisance” is often preferred;

* Either their nature teratogenic (causing malformations in newborns), even if not associated with a characteristic toxic to adults (typical example: dioxins, radiation, glycol ethers).

* Either, despite their character not directly toxic to humans and living beings, to their eventual ability to change or disrupt the operation of an ecosystem or the biosphere, either by destroying life (eg pesticides) or its conditions (for example chlorofluorocarbons that destroy the layer of ozone), or the contrary surfavorisant certain expressions (eg nitrates or phosphates agricultural promoting nitrophile flora to the detriment of other species, even the eutrophication or dystrophisation of wetlands, bays Marine, evolving towards dead zones in the worst cases).

It may also include introduction of species or genetic pollution can disrupt the functioning of ecosystems, that is to say the introduction of species or genes in a habitat where they were absent (p . ex. muskrat or GMOs) or pollution by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide or methane.