Scientists now categorizing Earth as a ‘toxic planet’

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By Anthony Hines

 

The Earth is slowly becoming more and more toxic, but this isn’t coming from the Earth itself, in fact, it’s coming from humans. Us humans have negatively impacted the environment with the chemicals we produce. Life and humans alike are affected by the 250 billion metric tonnes (275.5 billion us tons) of chemicals produced each year. Chemicals being in the air, on the ground, on objects, can make contact with everything through many different ways.

 

We are seeing the entire planet slowly get covered by these chemicals, destroying environments and ecosystems. Julian Cribb, author of ‘Surviving the 21st century’, had this to say, “Earth, and all life on it are being saturated with man-made chemicals in an event unlike anything in the planet’s entire history”. Compared to everything else humans have done, this is the most impactful thing to ever happen to the Earth. The European Chemicals Agency have stated about 144,000 man-made chemicals, and the US Department of Health estimated about 2,000 new chemicals are created a year. Even the UN Environment Program says that most chemicals are even scanned to ensure safety.

 

Manufactured chemicals, plastic pollution, hazardous waste, coal, oil, and gas, is just a short list of things that are the leading the chemical production. Chemicals are making their way into everything, Cribb stating, “Industrial toxins are now routinely found in new-born babies, in mother’s milk, in the food chain, in domestic drinking water worldwide”. Doctors and scientists are starting to link more and more chemicals to disorders, obesity, and cancer. So what do we need to do? Mr. Cribbs made a few suggestions on what we should do. First, basic human right to now be poisoned. Second, a global alliance to reject chemicals. The world needs to start changing to a ‘zero waste’ policy, to eliminate even more chemical spread. “We all end up paying chemical toxicity one way or another. It’s a simple choice - pay at the supermarket, or pay at the hospice”, Cribbs final statement on the issue. We must continue to push for change for this world if we ever want to protect the future generations of humans.

 

Sources :

https://phys.org/news/2017-02-scientists-categorize-earth-toxic-planet.html