Unit 6 The Environment around the world

Objective:

Interpret oral and written language related to health matters and environmental issues by listening
and reading authentic texts in order to fulfill communication needs in the target language.

POLLUTANTS

A pollutant is a waste material that pollutes air, water or soil, and is the cause of pollution.

Three factors determine the severity of a pollutant: its chemical nature, its concentration and its
persistence.[1] Some pollutants are biodegradable and therefore will not persist in the environment
in the long term. However the degradation products of some pollutants are themselves polluting
such as the products DDE and DDD produced from degradation of DDT (from its trivial name,
dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) is one of the most well-known synthetic pesticides.

HEALTH MATTERS

Proper environmental management is the key to avoiding the quarter of all preventable illnesses
which are directly caused by environmental factors. The environment influences our health in
many ways — through exposures to physical, chemical and biological risk factors, and through
related changes in our behaviour in response to those factors.

Thirteen million deaths annually are due to preventable environmental causes. Preventing
environmental risk could save as many as four million lives a year, in children alone, mostly in
developing countries.

OIL SPILLS

An oil spill is a release of a liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment due to human
activity, and is a form of pollution. The term often refers to marine oil spills, where oil is released
into the ocean or coastal waters. Oil spills include releases of crude oil from tankers, offshore
platforms, drilling rigs and wells, as well as spills of refined petroleum products (such as
gasoline, diesel) and their by-products, and heavier fuels used by large ships such as bunker fuel,
or the spill of any oily refuse or waste oil. Spills may take months or even years to clean up.[1]

Oil also enters the marine environment from natural oil seeps.[2] Most human-made oil pollution
comes from land-based activity, but public attention and regulation has tended to focus most
sharply on seagoing oil tankers.

GLOBAL WARMING

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of Earth's near-surface air and oceans
since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation. According to the 2007 Fourth
Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global surface
temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the 20th century.[2][A] Most of the
observed temperature increase since the middle of the 20th century has been caused by increasing
concentrations of greenhouse gases, which result from human activity such as the burning of
fossil fuel and deforestation.[3] Global dimming, a result of increasing concentrations of
atmospheric aerosols that block sunlight from reaching the surface, has partially countered the
effects of warming induced by greenhouse gases.

NATURAL DISASTERS

A natural disaster is the effect of a natural hazard (e.g., flood, tornado, hurricane, volcanic
eruption, earthquake, or landslide) that affects the environment, and leads to financial,
environmental and/or human losses. The resulting loss depends on the capacity of the population
to support or resist the disaster, and their resilience.

PROTECTION OF THE ENVIRONMENT

Environmental protection is a practice of protecting the environment, on individual,

organizational or governmental level, for the benefit of the natural environment and (or) humans.
Due to the pressures of population and our technology the biophysical environment is being
degraded, sometimes permanently. This has been recognized and governments began placing
restraints on activities that caused environmental degradation. Since the 1960s activism by the
environmental movement has created awareness of the various environmental issues. There is not
a full agreement on the extent of the environmental impact of human activity and protection
measures are occasionally criticized.

Academic institutions now offer courses such as environmental studies, environmental

management and environmental engineering that study the history and methods of environmental
protection. Protection of the environment is needed from various human activities. Waste,
pollution, loss of biodiversity, introduction of invasive species, release of genetically modified
organisms and toxics are some of the issues relating to environmental protection.