Pollution Essay examples -- essays research papers

Pollution has become a major issue over the years because it contaminates the Earth’s environment and affects human health. While some environmental pollution is a result of natural causes such as volcanic eruptions, most is caused by human activities. The increase of various types of pollution has made cancer pollutant more prevalent among the people, raising the risk of getting cancer. After being exposed to theses pollutants, the effects may be immediate or delayed. Some of the delayed effects, due to the exposure, can go unnoticed for many years. Another major issue that pollution creates is the tremendous cost for preventing and cleaning it up. However, we can not regulate the pollutants to the extent where there are no more possible threats. The most we can do is to minimize the effects of the potential risks, which we may encounter as a society. We can approach this matter by conducting different types of test from animal studies and epidemiological studies.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  To regulate pollution, we first have to have an idea of what type of effects it will have on the general population and then determine the acceptable amount of exposure level. Since the specific risk here is that the individual will get cancer, after being exposed to a pollutant, possibly leading to their death, we have to consider a few factors such as age, sex, and their health status. Depending on how old the person is, if they are relatively young then he or she may not be affected by the pollutant because their immune system can probably fight off the pathogens. Gender can also make a difference, since males and females have different biological anatomies, thus the pollutant may be resistant to females but not the males or vice versa. Finally, the health status of a person also has to be considered. If a person is healthy and fit then maybe age might not matter and it will decrease their potential threat from the pollutant. After all of these factors are take n into account we have to regulate the carcinogenic pollutant and determine an acceptable level of risk. To determine what the effects are after an individual has been exposed to this pollutant and gets cancer, we can perform animals or epidemiological studies. Even though the animal studies will not be deterministic since we are not using human subjects to collect the data, it will give us an idea on how a... ... an acceptable exposure level; again this can not be done without some degree of subjectivity. As a result, I believe that an appropriate exposure level to cancer, due to this pollutant, should be one in a million. This is acceptable because every one person out of a million that is affected by this pollutant can get treated and cared for. By setting it at this level I think that there it would eliminate the shortage problems at hospital or at any care centers when providing treatments to the infected people. Thus, everyone who gets cancer from this pollutant will have the opportunity to take care of themselves and not have to worry about the lack of resources.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Everyone takes risk in particularly in everything they do. The best thing to do is minimize the effects of the risks as much as possible. The cancer causing pollutant in this case can be regulated by using some type of preventive measures. Without being oblivious about the moral issues, we have to set certain risks and exposure level of the pollutant. I set my risks and exposure level after determining several issues and came to conclusion after what I thought was the most optimal conditions.