Air Pollution’s Effect on People

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Air pollution’s effect on people Intro: Air pollution has had a major effect on people ever since the industrial age. Once we started building factories and driving cars the amount of pollution has skyrocketed and Lung disease has risen dramatically. I believe if we use alternative fuels the incidence of lung diseases would drop. Counter: Opponents say that air pollution today is not a major part of our health problems. They say that more and more people smoke. A by product of smoking is benzene (a known leukemogen). One researcher, Benard D. Goldstein stated, “The decline in smoking led to about a tenfold greater decrease in total-population benzene exposure. (1) They conclude that smoking is the reason people’s lungs get diseases and air pollution has very little affect on people’s health problems. Body 1: The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) most recent data shows that 95 percent of all Americans face an increased likelihood of developing cancer as a result of breathing pollutants. (2) A 2007 German study University of Duisburg found that in densely populated areas “Residents living twice as close to a major road as their neighbors could expect to suffer on average 7% higher levels of calcification, which is linked to heart attack and stroke.“ (3) According to a WHO analysis of air quality measurements taken from 2003-2010 found that the largest contributors to urban outdoor air pollution are motorized transportation, small-scale manufacturers and coal-fired power plants. (4) In conclusion Schultz, Martin G., et al in “Air Pollution and Climate-Forcing Impacts of a Global Hydrogen Economy” determined that “If today’s surface traffic were powered entirely by hydrogen fuel cell technology, anthropogenic emissions of the ozone precursors nitrogen oxide (NO[subX]) and carbon monoxide could be reduced by up to 50%, leading to significant

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