Everyday Exposure to Toxic Pollutants
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ReflectionAfter reading this article, I was very surprised to see how naive people were back in the day in thinking that all these chemicals were just okay to use on certain products. After learning in my APES class that people were just so accepting of a very harmful pesticide called DDT, it was just mind blowing that they would let products like this pass on as safe for the average consumer who knows nothing about chemicals and whether or not they were safe. I am very glad that this topic gained attention before I was born so I am able to live in a world that is actually trying to fix what the past generation has done not only to the environment, but to our wellbeing as a human race. Even though there are many laws and acts not that make living much more safer then it was before, I still do not think we are in the clear yet. We may never be in the clear. Learning about how there are certain chemicals that are considered "ubiquitous" meaning that they just stay in our bodies and have no way of actually becoming extracted, nothing will ever be the same as it once was. But a solution to this would most definitely be education. With education, we can teach future generations about the same problems we are dealing with and hopefully, they are able to do a much better job of fixing it.
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SummaryIn our world today, we are more focused on the fact that we are killing each other when in reality, what we are doing the environment is not only just causing it to die, but causing us to be affected with a wide variety of toxic chemicals that can severely effect our health in a negative way. In 1980, Lance A. Wallace of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency launched a serious effort to try and find as well as assess every toxic substance that us humans get exposed to everyday. After further research, it was found that there were many volatile organic compounds that we are exposed to and even more surprising, we are mostly exposed to these compounds when we are inside. Similarly, there are also a high amount of pesticides that we are also becoming exposed to. These pesticides and volatile organic compounds can actually cause about 3,000 cases of cancer a year. We are also being exposed to these pesticides indoors as well. Nowadays, it seems like most of the things or places we come into contact with contains a very high amount of dangerous toxic chemicals and that is very worrisome. From a photocopier all the way to even carpet, we have exposed so much toxic chemicals to these products that we run the risk of a various amount of health risks. For example, small children have a risk that the dust in their homes have a chance to expose them to cadmium, lead, or other heavy metals. Even when it comes to outdoors, there is so much pollution in the air recently that we do not even know what we are breathing into our bodies and whether they are safe or not. Since then there have been a various amounts of laws and acts that the United States have passed to try and fix these problems so that our children will live a better, more healthier life. Not just for them, but for our environment as well.
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