Biological Impacts:
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Skin Cancer on human beings:
The people who work in the uranium mines suffer from skin burn and cancer.
These occur due to the radiations from the radioactive material. The different
organisms show different sensitivity to the radiations. There are certain
conditions in which the oak trees can survive but the pine trees are not able
to do so. The short range effects are known as the immediate effects and occur
within the few days. It includes the loss of hair, nails, subcutaneous
bleeding, and change in the number of cells and metabolism, change in the
proportion of cells. The long range effects are known as the delayed effects
and do not occur within the few days.
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Respiratory diseases: The World Health Organization states that 2.4
million people die each year from causes directly attributable to air
pollution, with 1.5 million of these deaths attributable to respiratory
diseases caused due to Industrial air pollution. The worst short term civilian
pollution crisis in India was the 1984 Bhopal Disaster. Leaked industrial
vapors from the Union Carbide factory, belonging to Union Carbide, Inc.,
U.S.A., killed more than 25,000 people outright and injured anywhere from
150,000 to 600,000. These respiratory diseases include Asthma, Emphysema,
Bronchitis, Lung Cancer and many other similar diseases.
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Four Big Pollution Diseases of
Japan: The four big
pollution diseases of Japan were caused due to various kinds of heavy metal
pollution and their effects are still prevalent in some regions in Japan. These
diseases include the Minamata disease, Itai-itai disease and Yokkaichi
asthma. The man reasons behind the diseases were mercury and cadmium poisoning
released from the industries.
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Endangers
the aquatic fauna: Releases of
unnaturally cold water from reservoirs can dramatically change the fish and
macro invertebrate fauna of rivers, and reduce river productivity. In
Australia, where many rivers have warmer temperature regimes, native fish
species have been eliminated, and macro invertebrate fauna have been
drastically altered. Again the warm water released from the effluent streams
from the industries harm aquatic animals such as fish, amphibians and copepods.
Thermal pollution may also increase the metabolic rate of aquatic animals, as
enzyme activity, resulting in these organisms consuming more food in a shorter
time than if their environment were not changed.
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Cause water borne diseases:
The water bodies are polluted to such extent that the water cannot be used for
future needs without purification and thus it causes various water borne
diseases in human body.
Besides,
industrial pollution has more hazardous effects on health and environment which
if not taken care of at the moment would cause great havoc in the future.
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