Environmental Issues

Our beautiful environment is rapidly degrading in the scenery, variety and peacefulness. This is due to human interference in the natural world.

Air pollution is caused by harmful gases such as carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide and very small particles of carbon. Most of the pollution is caused by factories, vehicles and livestock. Today air pollution has become a great threat to human life. People face breathing problems like asthma due to pollution
Water pollution is the presence of harmful materials in water, such as sewage, dissolved metals, waste from farms and factories and crude oil spilled from shipwrecked tankers. The three main substances that pollute water are nitrates from fertilizers, sewage and detergents. Pollution causes harm to organisms living in water and can also harm people's health, and can cause problems such as cancer.

There are thought to be 29 000 rhinos left in the world- of which 20 000 live in South Africa. 455 rhinos have been poached in South Africa since 2012. A kilogram of rhino horn is about R650 000. China has only 3 000 rhinos left. South African wildlife authorities have made 200 arrests in relation to rhino poaching in 2012.

The production of nuclear weapons has polluted vast amounts of soil and water at hundreds of nuclear weapons facilities all over the world. Many of the substances released, including plutonium, uranium, strontium, caesium, benzene, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), mercury and cyanide, are carcinogenic and/or mutagenic and remain hazardous for thousands, some for hundreds of thousands, of years. Contaminants from nuclear weapons production and testing have often travelled far down wind and downstream. Production facilities for nuclear weapons are heavily polluted, for example in the United States there are over 4500 contaminated Department of Energy sites.

Sound becomes unwanted when it either interferes with normal activities such as sleeping, conversation, or disrupts or...