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Air pollution can occur naturally or be caused by human activities. [4] Air pollution causes around 7 or 8 million deaths each year. [5] [6] It is a significant risk factor for a number of pollution-related diseases, including heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma and lung cancer.
Various definitions of pollution exist, which may or may not recognize certain types, such as noise pollution or greenhouse gases.The United States Environmental Protection Administration defines pollution as "Any substances in water, soil, or air that degrade the natural quality of the environment, offend the senses of sight, taste, or smell, or cause a health hazard.
Hazards have the potential to cause adverse effects only if they come into contact with populations that may be harmed. For this reason, hazard identification includes the development of a conceptual model of exposure. [8] Conceptual models communicate the pathway connecting sources of a given hazard to the potentially exposed population(s).
Diseases caused by pollution, lead to the chronic illness and deaths of about 8.4 million people each year. However, pollution receives a fraction of the interest from the global community. [1] This is in part because pollution causes so many diseases that it is often difficult to draw a straight line between cause and effect.
The risk of air pollution is determined by the pollutant's hazard and the amount of exposure that affects a person. [36] For example, a child who plays outdoor sports will have a higher likelihood of outdoor air pollution exposure than an adult who tends to spend more time indoors, whether at work or elsewhere. [36]
Environmental disaster is caused by human activity, so many believe that such disasters can be prevented or have their consequences reduced by human activity as well. Efforts to attempt mitigation are evident in cities such as Miami, Florida , in which houses along the coast are built a few feet off of the ground in order to decrease the damage ...
Water pollution also reduces the ecosystem services such as drinking water provided by the water resource. Sources of water pollution are either point sources or non-point sources. [156] Point sources have one identifiable cause, such as a storm drain, a wastewater treatment plant, or an oil spill. Non-point sources are more diffuse.
The health and environmental impact of transport is significant because transport burns most of the world's petroleum.This causes illness and deaths from air pollution, including nitrous oxides and particulates, and is a significant cause of climate change through emission of carbon dioxide.