Content by: EcoHealth101 – www.ecohealth101.org
Posted by: Eco-Question Editor
Source: EcoHealth101 – www.ecohealth101.org
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- © Wantana Rungsapsombat
- © Sira Boonphinon
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EcoHealth101 – www.ecohealth101.org
- Wantana Rungsapsombat
- Sira Boonphinon
More people are going more places than ever before. All that movement has a huge health impact. As people move, diseases travel farther and faster than in the past.
People move. They always have; they always will.
Sometimes natural disasters, oppression, and wars drive people to migrate. Nearly four million Iraqis, for example, fled their homes between 2003 and 2007; half of them left the country. At other times, people venture in search of economic opportunity. Mexicans go to the United States, Turks to Germany, and Indonesians to Malaysia.
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Content by: EcoHealth101 – www.ecohealth101.org
Posted by: Eco-Question Editor
Source: EcoHealth101 – www.ecohealth101.org
Photo Credit: © NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org
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Globalization. You see that word everywhere nowadays. What you might not see is a simple definition of it. That’s because the term is a broad label for a host of political, economic, cultural, and even biological changes.
E-mails zip between Connecticut and Cairo. Shoppers in D.C. buy fruit from Chile and chocolate from Belgium. An ATM in South Africa churns out money from an account in Germany. Kids in Baltimore watch Japanese cartoons. A doctor in India reads an x-ray from a patient in New York. Avian flu (also called bird flu) travels from Asia to Africa, and eventually to North America. These are just a few examples of globalization.
Look closely, and you’ll find a common thread among all those examples – movement. People and products, information and ideas: They’re moving ever more rapidly from one place to another. As they do, they’re changing things around the globe.
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Content by: EcoHealth101 – www.ecohealth101.org
Posted by: Eco-Question Editor
Source: EcoHealth101 – www.ecohealth101.org
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As more ultraviolet radiation reaches the Earth, we face greater risk of sunburn, skin cancer, and eye problems. Learn what can go wrong and find a simple way to protect yourself.
Sunburn is the most obvious sign that too much of the sun’s UVb radiation has hit our skin. Fire-red flesh and searing pain remind us – all too late – of the dangers of staying out in the sun. Those perils have grown worse as stratospheric ozone depletion allows more ultraviolet light to reach Earth’s surface.
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Content by: EcoHealth101 – www.ecohealth101.org
Posted by: Eco-Question Editor
Source: EcoHealth101 – www.ecohealth101.org
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The sun is essential to our survival, but not all light from the Sun is good for us. As the ozone layer becomes thinner, it is easier for harmful rays to reach the Earth’s surface.This can lead to serious health problems.
Sunlight – we couldn’t live without it. The sun warms our planet, and sunlight is the primary source of energy for plants. They, in turn, give us the oxygen we breathe and the food we eat. Our bodies need at least some sunlight, moreover, to produce vitamin D. This nutrient helps the body absorb calcium, a key ingredient in bones and teeth.
Yet there’s more to sunlight than what meets the eye. Visible light is only a sliver of a much broader band of energy. This bigger band is called the electromagnetic (E-M) spectrum. The E-M spectrum also includes radio waves, microwaves, x-rays, and other forms of invisible radiation. You can find diagrams of all this at NASA’s Electromagnetic Spectrum site.
Different parts of the spectrum have various wavelengths. In general, waves with shorter wavelengths can carry more energy than those with longer wavelengths. The light we can see falls in the middle of the E-M spectrum.
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Content by: EcoHealth101 – www.ecohealth101.org
Posted by: Eco-Question Editor
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Scientists in the 1960s realized that something was going wrong in the ozone layer. They soon figured out that human actions were damaging Earth’s shield against harmful radiation.
Yikes! Why were people destroying the ozone layer, the natural "sunscreen" we need to survive? The answer was our reliance on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which people once thought were ideal chemical compounds. You could find CFCs in lots of things that helped us live better:
- Refrigerators
- Spray cans
- Air conditioners
- Styrofoam products
- Insulation
- Cleaning solutions
But we discovered that CFCs were "punching" holes in the ozone layer. Here’s how the discovery was made, and what we did about it. Luckily, it’s a story with a happy ending.
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Content by: EcoHealth101 – www.ecohealth101.org
Posted by: Eco-Question Editor
Source: EcoHealth101 – www.ecohealth101.org
Photo Credit: © NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org
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The Earth’s protective ozone layer is getting thinner. There’s less ozone to absorb harmful radiation from the sun, and more of this radiation is reaching the Earth’s surface. This affects our atmosphere – and our health.
Ozone is a form of oxygen. It generally forms when oxygen (O2) from near the Earth’s surface drifts high up into the atmosphere. Ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun hits the oxygen molecules.
Some molecules split apart, creating single atoms. These atoms sometimes link up with O2 molecules, forming a new molecule with three oxygen atoms. That’s ozone (O3).
Ozone can be helpful or harmful, depending on where it’s located. If it’s high up, it’s good ozone. Ozone in the stratosphere protects people, animals, and plants from harmful ultraviolet rays.
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