We left off on Friday with a lecture on Waste & Litter. In particular, our talk centered around man-made plastics and other materials that were negatively effecting the environment. They clog our rivers, they pollute our oceans, and they look pretty darn ugly… but at least they can’t hurt us, right? Wrong. There is a type of pollution that can hurt us. It’s called toxic waste.

Toxic chemicals are generally produced by factories, automobiles, and other modern technologies. And although laws help us keep these pollutants in check, they have a bad habit of accumulating in our environment.

Meanwhile, cancer rates and the incidence of birth defects have doubled in the past 30 years. This is no coincidence. Recently, a study by Woodruff, Zofa, and Schwartz found toxic chemicals in over 99% of pregnant women.

Toxic waste in yet another way that humans are fouling the environment. But it’s not because we’re bad people. Many of today’s pollutants are left over from 50 or 100 years ago, long before we understood their adverse health effects. But change hasn’t come fast enough. Toxic chemicals are still today being produced by factories and automobiles. And that’s what makes environmental education so important. The first step to solving a problem is knowing that there is one.

June 9 – Toxic Waste (pg713)