Biology [3 marks Question Answer]

Besides global warming, change in climate air pollution also has certain bad impact on the environment. Depletion of ozone layer intensifies ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Intensified radiation will cause a significant increase in skin cancer and eventually have lethal effects on many organisms, including man. In plants such enhanced level of UV radiation are feared to cause stunted growth, short, thick stems, smaller leaves.

Effects of global warming are:

1. As the increase in temperature will be uniform all over the surface of the world. There will be serious climatic changes. This will bring various changes in wind and rain pattern.
2. Higher temperature will cause a rise in transpiration. This, in turn, will affect the groundwater table.
3. As the climatic belts shift from the equator towards the pole, the vegetation would also shift away from the equator.
4. Insects and pests will increase in the warmer climatic conditions. Thus, pathogenic diseases will multiply.

Preventing pollution offers important benefits, as pollution created never avoids the need for expensive investments in waste managements and cleanup. By anticipating the future, pollution prevention reduces both financial costs (waste management and cleanup) and real environmental costs (health problems and environmental damage): As a result, pollution ; prevention holds the exciting potential of protecting the environment and strengthening economic growth through more efficient production and natural resource use.

When we breathe air containing carbon monoxide, it is absorbed through the bloodstream where it displaces oxygen and bonds with the haemoglobin in your blood. Carbon monoxide as a greater affinity to haemoglobin than oxygen; CO bonds to haemoglobin about 250 times better than oxygen. Without oxygen, vital organs, your heart and brain becomes deprived and will begin to deteriorate. To compensate, your heart rate increases, breathing may become difficult and in the most serious circumstances cardiac trauma, brain damage, coma and even death will result.

Soil is the foundation of a healthy biosphere. Precipitation from air as acid rain and dry deposition of pollutants on land surface contribute to soil pollution. Pollutants combine with plant nutrients and are consumed by animals. Polluted soils unfavourably affect the microbial environment resulting in reduction in mineralization and decomposition processes. Soil fertility and aeration are also reduced, earthworms, nematodes, etc., are destroyed by toxic chemicals.