Environmental Pollution And Its Effects on Health and Nature

India’s Air Pollution Rivals China’s as World’s Deadliest - The New York Times : NEW DELHI — India’s rapidly worsening air pollution is causing about 1.1 million people to die prematurely each year and is now surpassing China’s as the deadliest in the world, a new study of global air pollution shows. The number of premature deaths in China caused by dangerous air particles, known as PM2.5, has stabilized globally in recent years but has risen sharply in India, according to the report, issued jointly on Tuesday by the Health Effects Institute, a Boston research institute focused on the health impacts of air pollution, and the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, a population health research center in Seattle.

Plastic Pollution : "The world population is living, working, vacationing, increasingly conglomerating along the coasts, and standing on the front row of the greatest, most unprecedented, plastic waste tide ever faced. Washed out on our coasts in obvious and clearly visible form, the plastic pollution spectacle blatantly unveiling on our beaches is only the prelude of the greater story that unfolded further away in the world’s oceans, yet mostly originating from where we stand: the land. From the whale, sea lions, and birds to the microscopic organisms called zooplankton, plastic has been, and is, greatly affecting marine life on shore and off shore. In a 2006 report, Plastic Debris in the World’s Oceans, Greenpeace stated that at least 267 different animal species are known to have suffered from entanglement and ingestion of plastic debris. According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, plastic debris kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals annu...

Environmental Pollution Also To Blame For Antibiotic Resistance: Other Factors That Make Bacteria Drug Resistant : Healthy Living/Wellness : Tech Times : "Bacteria can mutate and become resistant to medications over time. This resistance causes existing treatments to lose their efficacy, and in some cases, it consequently results in death that could have been prevented. Previous research has shown that the misuse of drugs leads to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It mostly affects treatments for common infectious diseases such as colds, flu and sore throat. It has prompted experts to educate the public about not using antibiotics when treating such illnesses. Antibiotic resistance may also turn into large-scale antimicrobial resistance, spoiling treatments for diseases such as HIV or malaria, as the World Health Organization explains.

Air pollution impairs function of blood vessels in lungs: Authors recommend limiting physical activity in heavily polluted areas -- ScienceDaily : ""This is the first human study to report an influence of air pollution on pulmonary vascular function," said lead author Dr Jean-Francois Argacha, a cardiologist at the University Hospital (UZ) Brussels, Belgium. "This is a major public health issue for people living in polluted urban areas where exercise could damage the lungs and potentially lead to decompensated heart failure." Promoting a safer environment appears to be as important as controlling conventional risk factors, like high cholesterol, in reducing cardiovascular disease.2 Air pollution consists of particles (particulate matter [PM] of different sizes) and gases (nitrogen dioxide, ozone, etc). The first vascular bed in contact with air pollutants is the pulmonary circulation yet few studies have investigated the impact.