This Fragile Planet

The word environment means simply what is around us. Some people live in a town

environment; for others, their environment is the countryside. But the air we breathe, the soil

on which we stand and walk, the water we drink are all parts of the environment.

Nowadays people understand how important it is to solve environmental problems that

endanger people's lives. The most serious environmental problems are;

-pollution in its many forms (water pollution, air pollution, nuclear pollution);

-noise from cars, buses, planes;

-destruction of wildlife and countryside beauty;

-shortage of natural resources (metals, different kinds of fuel);

-the growth of pollution.

Water pollution. How awful it is to live without water. There is no ocean or sea which is

not used as a dump. The Pacific Ocean, especially, has suffered from nuclear pollution because some governments test nuclear weapons there. Many seas are used for dumping industrial and nuclear waste. Many rivers and lakes are poisoned too. Fish and reptiles can not live in them. There is not enough oxygen in the water. In such places all the birds leave their habitats and many plants die. If people drink this water they can die.

Air pollution. When the Americans decided to clean up the Statue of Liberty in 1986, the first thing they had to do was to make a hole in her nose and take away the acid rain that had collected inside. The polluted air of New York had mixed with the rain and damaged the Statue badly. And you certainly know that most of the pollution in big cities comes from cars and buses. More and more people are told not to be in direct sunlight, because ultraviolet radiation from the sun can cause skin cancer. Normally the ozone layer in the atmosphere protects us from such radiation, but if there are holes in the ozone layer ultraviolet radiation can get to the earth. Many scientists think that these holes are the result of air pollution.

Both clean water and clean air are necessary for our health. If people want to survive they must solve these problems quickly. Man is beginning to understand that his environment is not just his own town or country, but the whole earth. That's why people all over the world think and speak so much about ecology.