The Environment - Air Pollution, Air Pollution And Asthma, Water Pollution, Leading Water Pollutants, Our Drinking Water

Air, earth, fire, and water. The four elements of the universe according to Empedocles, a philosopher who lived in the 400s B.C.¹ Science has proven, contrary to Empedocles' theories, that matter is not made up of varying ratios of these elements. However, all living matter needs all or most of these elements to survive.

In this chapter we will discuss the quality of our air and water and how it relates to our health. The first two panels look at air pollution. First we discuss the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's six principal pollutants. Next, we'll try to shed some light on the claims that air pollution causes asthma. Despite claims that asthma cases are rising because our air is increasingly more polluted, we'll actually see that air pollution levels are falling overall.

The next three panels look at water pollution. First we'll look at national water quality. Have things gotten better since the Clean Water Act was enacted in 1972? Can we really say that 2002 is the Year of Clean Water, as Congress declared?

Despite having some of the cleanest water in the world, our waterways do contain pollutants. Next, we'll define the top 5 water pollutants and discuss their effects on our health. Our discussion of water pollution concludes with a discussion of the quality of our drinking water. In 2000, more than 1 billion people worldwide lacked clean drinking water. In the United States, the drinking water is some of the safest in the world. However, in 2001, nearly 24 million people in the U.S. had their health threatened by contaminated drinking water. Two of the key chemicals that must be regulated in order to maintain safe drinking water are arsenic and fluoride, according to the World Health Organization. In the United States safe levels of these two chemicals have been in dispute recently. We'll touch on these issues briefly.

Bacteria are everywhere in our environment. Some are harmful; others are not. Before the advent of penicillin, the first antibiotic, bacterial diseases such as pneumonia and tuberculosis killed large numbers of people. Since the discovery of antibiotics, however, these diseases have virtually disappeared. Or have they? The final panel in this chapter discusses the threat of drug resistant bacteria to our wellbeing.