What are the Worst Sources of Pollution?

Bovine flatulence gets my vote.

LynDoor™Industries is working on a solution to this problem.

Sort of a Been-o for Bovines. We're still in the exploratory stages of development. Separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

Oh, the sweet smell of success!!!

Seriously, all it takes is some politicians who have some guts and aren't on the take from the major polluters to get things in hand. Unfortunately, greed trumps right every time.

You make a joke of these animal methane releases, but to some greenies this is a major concern and reason to stop enjoying beef. I do have a problem with over use of antibiotics however. This has made chickens produce drug resistant strains of salmonella.

United Nations fighting farts the world over:http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html

It would seem to me that the gubment is already aware of this problem and are "working" on fixing it: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/story/2012-04-11/FDA-antibiotics-farm-animals/54172866/1

Of course, they're just "requesting" that they make these changes, and if they don't, they'll get a pat on the wrist. The article mentions regulation pipelined three years from now, so I wouldnt hold your breath for anything

I'm not joking, at all.

I can no longer eat beef because I, now, have a violent reaction to either the growth hormones or other unnatural drugs ingested by beef cattle.

My family raised prime beef cattle for many years, so this is particularly vexing to me.

They don't put all this crap in animals because it's good for the animal. They put it there because they have bought and paid for enough politicians to allow them to use any means to maximize profits, regardless of the health and generational implications of these irresponsible actions motivated entirely by GREED.

The best beef I ever ate was grass fed. It had a totally different flavor. I have heard of cattle being fed with shredded manure and newspaper, at least for part of their diet.

I recently read about meat glue which is used to form some filet mignons etc.

http://www.the-signal.com/section/33/article/64801/

It is incredible how our government allows this stuff, and pink slime etc.

Hear! Hear!

Well stated!

I know a farming family in Idaho in which the eldest daughter has been getting a USA EPA federal environmental grant to study "Bovine flatulence" quantity and incidence to the tune of $260,000 for over 8 years so there must be something to this.

She has come up with some "cutting-edge" systems that attach to both ends of the "cow" for high resolution 24-7 monitoring of the gas being emitted.

My suggestion is to install "after-burners" on all sources of methane so that the ocidfrous effects are negated while providing a most extraordinary visual display as well as a humorous reaction from all involved.

The units could be named?

Congratulations! You have coined a new word to add to the lexicon of bovine fart fighting grant writers the world over. (That's a mouthful)

I can see it now, "the 'in situ-ation' irradicfation of ocidfrous effects of bovine remissions as it relates to air". Or, "how to light cow farts".

Yep! That's it! We have found the solution to our energy crisis and our pollution threat!

All we have to do is expand the application to all souces of methane producers including humanoids.

Although I do have concerns for the humanoid subjects of the "wooly" class as I have personally witnessed the negative adverse affects experienced by sudden ignition of methane whenever the heat from the "blue-flame" made contact with the hairy surface of the upper thigh and glute areas.

Alas, it was not pretty but it was hilarious and memorable to say the least.

Come to think of it; It was also cheaper and quicker than using NAIR on your sleeping dorm buddy.

Ahhh; Brings back some fond memories of the past and how easy it was to come up with something entertaining to do when our funds were short and the hours were long.

Building on lyn's comment...........................Greed and stupidity are the two major sources of pollution.

There are too many individual instances to mention, the overuse of antibiotics, the overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, stupid people, flushing their old meds down the toilet, too much plastic packaging...............................................

More on cow farts:http://phys.org/news135003243.html

http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&biw=1600&bih=791&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=9hvKYzKzdeJ6KM:&imgrefurl=http://southdakotapolitics.blogs.com/south_dakota_politics/2008/week19/&docid=de-7hjMFX2ijBM&imgurl=http://southdakotapolitics.blogs.com/south_dakota_politics/images/2008/05/09/cowfartsign.jpg&w=480&h=360&ei=NQqkT9imC8iztwfY1e2ZDQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=364&vpy=199&dur=4197&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=125&ty=223&sig=116225555217072548299&page=1&tbnh=129&tbnw=192&start=0&ndsp=30&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0,i:77

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2076607/Sheep-flatulence-inoculation-developed.html

Gee, that's funny... According to the website: http://www.rfu.org/cacw/pollution.html

"The pulp and paper industry is one of the largest and most polluting industries in the world; it is the third most polluting industry in North America."

Scientific American, which is part of Macmillan Publishers, has 3.5 millions subscribers to its monthly print magazine.

... so it's kind of funny that Scientific American forgot to include pulp and paper processing in the 'Top 10' they cited.

--So my definition of the 'worst source of pollution' is 'that other guy, over there'.

A lot of this could be avoided without any great loss by:

1. Recycling

2. Eliminating redundant packaging like cereal boxes, and other boxes.

3. e-books,e-newspapers, e-magazines for most publications.

4. Getting the USPS to charge double or triple for junk mail.

5. Using pulp waste for other products: http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=56373&CultureCode=en

Personally, we don't even have room for the books we already own and my daughter and wife wants "real books."

That list doesn't address the ten worst pollution sources, even if it claims it does.

Inclusions of entries such as;

'contaminated ground water',

'contaminated surface water',

'urban air quality',

and 'indoor air pollution',

suggests the author aspired to list of ten, but fell significantly short.

Those aren't sources of pollution so much as the results of pollution.

Several of the other 'top ten' are at least a bit suspect....for example 'used lead acid battery recycling'...is this this causing more pollution than not recycling lead acid batteries?

....and what of an opinion that holds

'the opinions of others shall not be respected as valid, the only valid opinions are those consistent with X, all other opinions shall be refused any acknowledgement of validity and actively condemned'

should this be respected or acknowledged as valid.

What of the opinion that some perspectives are in fact not valid? Can there not be false perspectives?

Very simply put, the worst polluter is MAN. From the first Neanderthal that roasted a T-Rex haunch over an open fire, we have been on a path of reckless pollution. Man seems to be missing the stewardship gene. Until we (myself included) develop a cure for our greed we are on a path to our own destruction.

We all need to be more aware of our decisions before we purchase, manufacture or trade anything.

You're kidding, right?

The worst polluters on the planet are FISH and other forms of marine life. The ocean is full of fish P-- and fish P**P. The ocean floor is covered with the stuff, along with all kinds of dead creatures and pieces of dead creatures.

And look at the size of this mess: The fish have covered 2/3rds of the globe with their fishy cesspool. Plus, they make no attempt whatsoever to clean it up. It's disgusting.

At least 'MAN' makes an effort to clean up after himself, spending billions of dollars just in the U.S. to do so.

Tell a fish to clean up after itself and it would just laugh at you -- if it could laugh, which it can't. I wouldn't be able to laugh either if I had to live in a cesspool. Ugh.

Industry making plastics: they pollute air, water and soil during the manufacturing processes, and the products pollute air (releasing VOCs), soil (still not enough re-cycled) and water (e.g. islands made from garbage exist in the oceans and birds consume plastics floating on the surface) … j.

Yes, plastics are not only bad for the environment but thay led to the ultimate extinction of an entire animal species.

I'm referring to the Hairless Nocturnicus Subterrainous Naugahydeous.

This species was decimated so that hot rodders could have tuck-n roll seat covers in their cars and cheap chairs and couches could be covered in faux-leather, for the unwashed masses.

Shame, shame!

Ah, the "Hairless Nocturnicus Subterrainous Naugahydeous."

It's been extinct so long I had forgotten it. How quickly we forget. Strangely, I find it difficult to find anyone willing to admit to ever owning it's hide. I would have thought that memories involving first cars, girls and back seats....well you get the picture.

'The worst polluters on the planet are FISH and other forms of marine life." Please have some respect for your ancestors, from way, way, way back. You owe your Recurrent laryngeal nerve to your aquatic forefathers.

Besides, one man's marine skeletal remains, is another man's limestone wall. Or the critical part of the invention that started the Alfred Nobel legacy, and wealth, diatomaceous earth.

I don't eat oysters, I've seen where they live, and they can't move when it gets really nasty.

Don't forget that a dead fish is food for millions of other organisms. Oceans where men are not present are far cleaner than the oceans filled with used palstic bottles, empty syringes and even a Harley Davidson in a shipping container washed up from Japan. I am not suggesting the elimination of men and their garbage. I am simply saying that the rest of the animal world remains in balance with one feeding on another and through millions of years there has not been a net buildup of trash until the arrival of man. We just need to take responsibility for out corporate action (corporate is the total of our efforts not to blame corporations which is a whole different story.)

Yes. Or sarcasm.

I refuse to buy into that guilt that mankind, in general, is a worse a polluter than any other animal on this planet. I'll agree that there are many sources of 'pollution' in various locations by certain individuals, corporations and government entities. But there are greater numbers of individuals, corporations, and government entities that clean up various locations and dispose of polluting materials so they are no longer toxic.

Here's an example of what I mean: http://www.gapminder.org/videos/200-years-that-changed-the-world-bbc/

This graph would not show positive growth if we were really polluting our world on a global scale. In fact the health of a population increases with industrialization and growth. We'd be getting sicker, not healthier, if mankind was 'the world's worst polluter'.

I agree that in general your point is valid that humanity in total is no more or less of a polluter than other animals but I do believe that there is a significant exception that make this an inaccurate comparison. The two examples I provide hinge on the same concept of being aware.

Regardless of how despicable of an act, humans have intentionally "poisoned" wells and land to prevent others from gaining from them. The most well known example of this was the scorched earth campaign of the strategic Soviet retreat during World War II. AFAIK no other creature intentionally pollutes so that others will suffer. Once one accepts that we are aware that pollution harms others, we should mitigate pollution when it occurs. How much mitigation and when should people have become aware of being a polluter are precisely the point of this type of a discussion. Dismissing pollution because it happens naturally is like dismissing murder because predators, herbivores and even plants kill their own.

Define pollution.

1. Pollution is a substance or a phenomenon that is in the wrong place.

Considering a couple factors:

1. The amount of pollutants released;

2. The relative chemical, radiological, or biological hazard posed by the pollutants;

3. The expected time the pollutants can be expected to pose a hazard (i.e., half life or est lifetime);

4.The degree to which the pollutants are either contained or dispersed;

Three big sources come to mind immediately:

-Volcanic eruptions

-Deep sea hydrothermal vents (black smokers)

-Burning coal.

All three cause massive quantities of very long lived toxins and radiological hazards to be widely dispersed.

Are they "the worst", though?

Toxins like mercury;

Alpha emitters like uranium and thorium;

Hydrogen sulfide and the resulting sulfuric acid...

in massive quantities very well dispersed in either the ocean or atmosphere.

I can't think of any that come close to these three....

What is your suggestion?

the fundamental problem is the increasing world population.. decreasing or increasing world population coinsides directly with the amount of pollution generated. decreasing world population would be relatively easy by lowering the child birth rates though education. many counties already have bith rate policies in effect.

image a world with nominal pollution and cheaper natural resouces. there would be no need for alternative energy.

1. All known species extract resources from the environment, and excrete waste into the environment. This is a natural part of this thing we call life. Granted, we humans have taken this process to unprecedented extremes, but that doesn't make human activity in this regard "unnatural".

2. Most known species (or, perhaps, I should limit this comment to "most known species of which I am aware") are profligate- left unmolested by predators, disease, etc, most will rapidly deplete the immediate environment of available resources and "poison" it with excreted waste, rendering it un-inhabitable by the species. Think how dense the forest would be if every acorn produced by a single tree germinated. The fact that we humans have outpaced our predators and developed protective means against disease does not free us from this natural tendency.

3. Ergo, we are naturally disposed to render our environment uninhabitable by our species. Not to worry though- I have great faith in Nature's ability to recover from her own mistakes...

i totally disagre. humans are now in control of animal population from manipulating the enviroment. there are no places from the depths of the oceans to space that humans have'nt used for they're own benifit, always with negative results.

humans have'nt been a part of the total ecological system since the stone age.

Weeeeeellllllllllllllllllllllllll,

Not everywhere.

The deer population in Arkansas has exploded over the last 20 years. Unless you have a 10 foot fence, your veggies will be eaten by deer.

Armadillo now burrow into the fields and forests and get run over on the roads. They are exotic to Arkansas, and have invaded us from the west (Texas) bringing cactus thorns with them.

Beaver? They are protected, so they were able to clear a Pine (yes, Pine) grove on the side of a hill above one of the small lakes on my property and block the outlet and overtop the dam.

If I lived there, the balance of nature might change.

where did all the preditors go?, and are the deer feeding on crops created by man?

The predators were never there.

There are millions of acres of privately owned timber land in Arkansas, not to mention national forests.

Our land was in the middle of this private, locally owned, forest land. With the exception of a single road through it, there was nothing for 5-10 miles in any direction from us. Although it had been logged at the turn of the century, the timber was what had grown naturally for hundreds of years.

Then, many years ago Weyerhaeuser Forest Products bought it all. They proceeded to clear-cut much of it and re-plant only fast growing pine trees for making paper.

That dramatically changed the character of the land and the animals that lived there when hardwood made up a significant portion of the forest mix.

It sucked. We've gotten used to the changes, but don't have to like them.

Believe me, Nature doesn't care. When things come to a crunch, and all living things (as we know them) are heading towards extinction, evolution will spawn living things that breathe noxious fumes, eat and thrive on toxins.

Living things, as we define them now, are quite transient and incidental in the larger scheme of things. So pollution as we know, doesn't matter a damn.

humans will be the first species to become extinct, and deservingly so. other species will then thrive as nature returns to its natural state.

durtieduck,

You're getting yourself way too excited over this whole thing. The most recent experiment called humans..............will end.

Your call to human extinction is a bold one. You go first..................I'll be right behind you.

i don't have a problem with that. shoot me an e-mail so we can set up a date. i what standing next in line.

What an odd question. At the other end is, "What are the best sources of pollution?"

Really odd.

You've got to love those bacteria that lived millions of years ago that took the original, natural, atmosphere of earth, carbon dioxide, ate it and excreted that poisonous, reactive pollutant oxygen. Without them, something else would be discussing this problem, not us.

Well in Japan, its the reactor in Fukushima which is supposedly "shutdown"

Several years ago I saw a broadcast of Nova on PBS entitled, "The Ghost In Your Genes." It was extremely interesting and can be previewed here. Another production by almost the same name, "Ghost In Your Genes" is a BBC production summarizes the information. I remembered it a little while ago when looking for something else. It just popped into my mind. It is very relevant to one generation's responsibility to succeeding ones.

Excellent film. Thanks for the link! It reminds me of the birds that Darwin studied. The ones which were the same basic species, but which had developed several varying types of beaks in order to best handle the food that was available in their region.

In the field of psychiatry we are constantly dealing with the question of nature versus nurture. After twenty years I have developed a leaning favoring genetics versus education in the broadest sense. That is that genetics is a more powerful determinate of future personality, intelligence, and accomplishment. All very complicated, but very important to consider.

It also brings to mind many other issues such as:

Genetically modified crops designed to be resistant to atrazine.

Nictinoids and the death of bees, and other species.

The mass die off of ambhibians in the USA. etc.

Don't write us off just yet.

There's still time for us to come to our senses and let ethics trump dollars. (No pun intended)

Klaatu Barada Nikto

You're welcome.

It is almost certain our cleverness will not save us. Our wisdom might.

I have often thought that advancing technology might as likely kill off mankind as preserve it.

I've been looking in more detail at Epigenetics. Since I referred to the Diabetes "epidemic" in young people, I found this short article relating the two. The upshot: More evidence that what a mother eats (and does) during pregnancy may influence the long-term health of the child.

Sorry to add another, potentially, time-consuming link. Another video I just stumbled across -- "How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth." I've only watched a few minutes but because I respect David Attenborough, I intend to give it a further look.

I just watched the Attenborough video. I shake my head as I have for many years now... how come what seems like common wisdom is only now dawning on, still relatively few people, when indigenous peoples (pre-industrialization) understood the relation between population and resources instinctively. The question answers itself. We have removed ourselves so far from living close to the Earth and it's resources we depend on, that we have presumed a never ending supply because in our lifetime, and in our country (I'm speaking of U.S. and other developed countries, now) it's pretty much been that way. I was shocked to learn at one point in my life that some people really didn't know where milk came from. This is why even a backyard garden and community and school gardens are so important. Stewardship of the Earth comes from primary dependence on it.

Money plays a big roll in adding to the pollution in the world Two of the biggest polluters are the airplanes and ocean ships .Because of our life style we think we need them .If their engines had the crap that is on our diesel engines The planes would be using so much fuel they would have to stop half way to fuel up, or there motors would quit in midair to burn out the emissions .I have a 1996 diesel truck that gets 30 miles to the gallon, From 2 to 3 times the milage of a new one .So it takes 2 to 3 times as many oilwells ,service stations ,fuel haulers, mechanics ,garages ,,ect to keep the new one running and will likely get scrapped when it goes off warrenty because it cost so much to fix .As of this year the farm tractors and combines will have this crap put on there machines .They will be burning ethanol and bio diesel with their diesel ,plus add RV antifreeze to keep it from freezing in the cold weather .Now we know that ethynol is made from a" vegtable" ,and what does vegatables do when they sit in a wet dish ,they mildew .The farmers use there machines about three months a year and they sit the rest of the time .This is going to be a very big problem in north America . I could relate to many things that the so call globale warming has cost us out here in the real world . We have to take a better look at what it is costing us to save a little co2

Toxicity is given by the LD50 parameter.

There is the occasional LD99 to contend with.