4.5 million people live in the city of Houston, Texas. Currently, those 4.5 million people are having to deal with 50 inches of rainfall from a hurricane named "Harvey". Little do people know, this county holds 40% of America's petrochemical capacity. Because of Harvey, refineries are being forced to shut down their operations. So far, 10 in the Houston area have shut down. Large clouds of sulfur dioxide will be released into the air, causing intense respiratory problems. Also, the minority populations will have it the worst considering they live closest to the plants. Hazardous waste is now seeping into the water supplies and will eventually recede back into the ocean with the water that the hurricane left in it's wake. Houston is now tasked with dealing with the worst flood in United States history and a chemical disaster which could make the air unsafe to breathe.
This can affect us in a number of ways. First of all, the pollutants going back into the ocean are likely to kill a multitude of marine diversity within the Gulf of Mexico...nothing new (I am looking at you BP). Also, it would not be uncommon for the pollutants to spread to the rest of Texas. Because of the oil refineries shutting down, gas prices are likely to go up. Poor air quality can be extremely detrimental to newborns and to the elderly. People are stuck having to breath in the toxic fumes because they have nowhere to go but outside since all of their homes are not stuck under 50 inches of rain water. We, and I mean humans, must band together and help each other with our empathetic hearts. Land, animals, humans, clean water, and clean air have all been tainted by the worst hurricane in United States history. What is even scarier is that because the water is still warm in the Gulf, this disaster can likely strike again.
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The Maritime and Coastguard Agency is working with the Environment Agency to establish the source of the cloud, which left 150 people seeking medical treatment and caused the evacuation of Birling Gap beach in East Sussex. A satellite imaging agency may have located a possible source of the chemical plume to a boat close to the East Sussex shore. Two pollution monitoring sites on the south coast picked up a quadrupling in ozone levels in a 30-minute period on Sunday afternoon, suggesting the toxic cloud came from a nearby ship.
Timothy Baker, from King's College London's environmental research group, which manages the pollution monitoring network for Sussex local authorities, said these readings suggested the source was nearby and offshore because of the wind direction at the time. Similar levels of ozone pollution were reported during the 2003 heatwave, but at the time the levels did not rise so quickly, and no one reported stinging eyes, sore throats and vomiting as they did on Sunday. An Environment Agency spokesman said: "We are currently investigating any potential onshore sources of the pollution and to date we have not identified anything that could be attributed to the mist and we are liaising with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, who are doing similar investigations offshore." To think that this could all be—potentially—caused by a boat. I am curious how a single ship could have produced such an intense toxic haze among the coast of the UK. If the haze can cause vomiting and visible sickness to humans, I am worried about what it can do to ecosystems and species. Ships are often overlooked when talking about large machinery that produce a ton of gas emissions. This should most certainly not be the case. I am morbidly curious as to what the future holds for ocean liners; I wonder if they will become obsolete. Ozone levels skyrocketed, which can never be good. I believe it is time to force sticker regulations onto mass transport vehicles such as trains, planes, and ships. If we continue down the path we are currently on, our environmental demise is inevitable. |
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December 2017
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