How does a Polluted Environment affect the health of humans?
All kinds of ways. I guess I would list three main types: physical harm, physiological harm and genetic harm. Physical harm would be any direct damage, for example sulphur dioxide in the air combines with water vapour to create sulphur acid which can corrode much stronger materials than the human body. Various compounds are toxic because they interfere with the body physiology. For example, carbon monoxide replaces oxygen in our red blood cells thus depriving the cells of oxygen. This happens quickly, while other compounds can be stored in our fat reserves and slowly released to poison us for a long time (e.g. carbon sulphides, I believe). Radioactive and some other substances and energies can affect the genetic make-up of the cell, particularly dangerous when the cell divides – as that’s when the genes have to be carefully replicated. This is exceptionally dangerous for our reproductive system since generative cells do not contain duplicate sets of chromosomes (which could act as a fa
