Environmental issues

Nowadays the air, water and soil pollution have become a really big problem. Humanity thinks too little about natural resources and future of our descendants, as well as the world face, the disappearance of rainforests and global warming.

The rapidly developing industry has polluted the air and the water. People, animals and plants are closely connected to each other. The usual order being broken, the nature starts to clean itself in a way that is harmful to the man himself.

Air ppollution

The number of cars in the world is increasing every day. They exhaust a lot of gas, and the result of this is smog. More people are being killed by pollution from cars, trucks and other sources than by traffic crashes. The researchers said that cutting greenhouse gases in just four major cities – London, Honk-Kong, Brazil, Mexico City, Chile and New York City – could save 64,000 lives over the next 20 years. Greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide or oozone, are those pollutants that tend to trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere or to affect solar radiation. Carbon dioxide and other pollutants from the burning fuels are causing people, particularly in cities, to die prematurely from asthma, breathing ddisorders and heart disease. Also huge pollution comes from industrial objects. Factories are using different chemicals and plastics and the waste of them is often burned. It is the main cause of global warming and acid rain. What’s more, making electricity causes more air pollution than any other industry in the world.

Water and soil

The air pollution is closely connected with water and soil, because chemicals with acid rain reach soil and water. Also the big damage for the environment makes using of different pesticides. They are designed to kill insects, weeds and other pests. Pesticides absorbed into the fruits or vegetables can become the reason of serious diseases. Pesticides are often designed to withstand rain, which means they are nnot always water-solute, and therefore they may persist in the environment for long periods of time.

The widespread use of agricultural fertilizers and household detergents has added large amounts of plant. Factories sometimes turn waterways into open sewers by dumping oils, toxic chemicals, and other harmful industrial wastes into them. In mining and oil-drilling operations, corrosive acid wastes are poured into the water. In recent years, waste treatment plants have been built to fight against water pollution. Some towns, however, sstill pollute rivers by pouring raw sewage into them. Farm fertilizers in some regions fill groundwater with nitrates, making the water unfit to drink.

Environmental problems in Lithuania

Lithuania is a small country, but there are some protective places, reservations and forest reserves. Lithuanian government take care of these places. But unfortunately there are some bad public “traditions” leading to polluted environment. Littering in the forest or in other nice and clean places is becoming more and more common. If someone leaves garbage somewhere in the forest, soon a heap of garbage appears there. This example shows that some people are really narrow-minded, because they don’t pay any attention to consequences of such behaviour.

Some facts

During the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, the Soviets located many polluting industries, such as chemical, cement, and pesticide plant, in Lithuania. Industrial production was run at 100 percent capacity, but only 15 percent of the products were used in Lithuania. The rest of the products were exported to the other Soviet republics.

Defoliation occurred, human health was affected, and 70 percent of Lithuanian’s waterways became polluted. Municipal wastewater and other solid and toxic waste were dumped into the country’s rivers, which then flowed into the Baltic Sea.

Water ppollution is one of Lithuania’s most serious problems. Biochemical oxygen demand, organic and nutrient (nitrogen, phosphorus) substances are the characteristic surface water pollutants. Lithuanian surface waters are slightly polluted with heavy metals and oil products.

Out of approximately 500 vertebrates, 25,000 invertebrates and more than 1,500 plant and fungi species known in Lithuania today, the state of only a ...