How USA and China Nations Destroy Humans Respiratory System
Respiratory health is of the utmost importance when considering our overall health and well-being. Our respiratory system is one of the most important organ systems in the human body. If we cannot exchange gases in our lungs, we will be poisoned by our own cellular waste and die. Unfortunately, due to the rise in air pollution, adults and children are more at risk for respiratory illness, both acute and chronic, than ever. The combination of deforestation and other manmade increases in greenhouse gases are negatively impacting the health of citizens all over the world. This respiratory system essay will discuss two heavily industrialized nations, the United States and China, to give examples of how population density can exacerbate this impact.
The respiratory system is one of the most vital organ systems of the human body. Within it, gases are exchanged to keep oxygen in our system and carbon dioxide out of it by working together with the cardiovascular system. When the respiratory system malfunctions due to illness and/or chronic conditions, it can be life threatening due to the blocking of our vital airways or even permanent damage to our gas exchanging alveoli and other lung tissue. Even the most common illnesses we know of nowadays such as the common cold and the flu used to be deadly as they attack the upper and lower respiratory systems before we learned to manage them with nutrition, medicine, and greater information.
The respiratory system can be put at risk by particulate matter (or PM) in the air, leading to disorders such as lung cancer and COPD. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, is a combination of chronic bronchitis and emphysema, which decreases the ability to perform gas exchange in the lungs, often caused by smoking. This ailment is quite common and has become a major issue in China for elderly men. Over time, COPD makes it harder to breathe, the damaged lungs being unable to freely exhale due to the increased dead space due to the collapse of the alveoli responsible for exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide, and smoking is the leading cause of emphysema-related complications. Smoking is also widely known to be one of the biggest preventable causes of death. However, particulate matter is not only found in cigarettes.
Many sources of particulate matter are caused by environmental pollutants, such as burning petroleum, wood, and coal for fuel. In Asia and China specifically, the leading cause of NOx in the atmosphere are vehicles, industrial manufacturing, and power plants running on fossil fuel. Nitrogen fertilizers used in China often are not entirely absorbed by their crops; the rest of the nitrogen escapes into the atmosphere as greenhouse gas.In the process, we are not only impacting our environment, but our own health and well-being. Dense areas, such as urban United States and China, are incredibly vulnerable to high levels of smog and particulate matter, leading to higher concentrations of respiratory illness and death. The biggest causes of particulate matter are power plants and exhaust from everyday vehicles. Traffic is a large concern for air pollution, as more cars on the road leads to an increase and spread of the pollution they produce.
The denser the population, the more greenhouse gases are produced by day to day life. An example studying this model was conducted in an urban area using mobile phone data to estimate density. This heightened pollution makes it harder to breathe, which is bad enough for a person with healthy lungs, but incredibly dangerous for people with not so healthy lungs. For example, if a patient has asthma, their respiratory system is even more sensitive to the high concentration of particulate matter and greenhouse gas. NOx is a key component of ground level ozone, an example of one of these poisonous greenhouse gases. Studies show that the increase of ground level ozone and PM2.5 during New York summers are detrimental to school age children living with asthma. Children are at risk of respiratory issues just from living their daily lives among pollution, and their sensitive lungs are not indestructible to this phenomenon.
Health care costs skyrocket as more and more people are admitted for emergency services to care for their ailing respiratory health, and populations who are already afflicted by chronic conditions are even more vulnerable to pollution, such as CO, NO2, and PM10. Evidence has been recorded that patients with asthma are much more likely to develop emphysema, although they are considered separate ailments. Their root symptom however is similar: a difficulty in being able to freely breathe due to the air trapped in the lungs. Their functions contrast in that asthma constricts the muscle around the airways, whereas emphysema increases the dead space within the alveoli. As a result, symptoms of asthma can exacerbate COPD. The addition of an overabundance of greenhouse gas makes for a deadly combination to those with respiratory illnesses, as not only is it difficult to breathe, but the air that can be inhaled has been polluted with abundant toxins.
Typically, greenhouse gas levels are regulated by the flora of the planet, returning breathable oxygen for its consumers. However, with an increase in deforestation, due to both manmade issues and natural disasters, there is becoming an increasingly concerning level of CO2 in the environment. Deforestation is often the result of industry clearings for other land uses, using the trees for other products. This manufacturing is responsible for releasing even more pollution into the air. In order to combat this deforestation, an initiative called “reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation” (REDD) has been proposed, encouraging conservation of existing forests to prevent further climate change and pollution. A main issue regarding this initiative is getting participation from businesses and corporations responsible for the pollution, as the choice would be between their profits and the planet. However, there is some evidence that the REDD method could be helpful in nations that are not developed, such as China, in order to reduce air pollution. Corporate emissions are one of the main causes of pollution on the planet, which makes it difficult to simply take personal responsibility for the state of our world.
Unfortunately, industry and manufacturing are not the only reasons for deforestation and air pollution. Wildfires also play a large role in the atmosphere of California in particular. The California Camp Fire that occurred in 2018 was one of the most disastrous forest fires in the history of the planet, and the deadliest in the state with 85 deaths as a result and over 18,000 buildings destroyed in the process. The burning of not only trees, but everything else that made up American livelihood—houses, cars, electronics—went up in smoke, and into the lungs of the people downwind in the path to the Bay Area. The fire burned uncontained for nearly a month until the first rain of the winter season put it to an end, but in that time many people still had to return to work and school, wearing particle masks typically appropriate for industrial work as the PM from the smoke quickly made it hard to breathe. Regarding the fires that are occurring in 2019, there are similar concerns.
The Camp Fire was cited to have been caused by negligence on the part of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, or PG&E, regarding upkeep of the drier areas of the county, and malfunctioning power lines. This year, power shutdowns have occurred to prevent such disasters from happening again. Despite the foresight of PG&E, this was not as effective as they would have liked, as exemplified by the 2019 Kincade Fire in Sonoma County. As of the end of October, this fire is more than 50% contained, but has resulted in structural damage and destruction, as well as a few injuries, albeit not as many as the devastating Camp Fire. Despite all this illness and societal devastation, it must be recognized that this is not inevitable, that concerns of pollution and deforestation can in fact be managed.
To end up, good air quality is a must for the world’s population to thrive, and yet due to the environmental impacts that we face in our modern age, such quality is diminishing at a rapid rate, leaving people sick and even dying. People will only continue to grow sicker unless we devise a way to clean up the environmental damage that has been done. Solutions have already been attempted in urban China, limiting traffic flow to certain people on certain days. This has not been practiced on a regular basis quite yet, but it is worth looking into for both China and other dense areas of population, such as San Francisco and New York. In New York, studies have been conducted testing environmental policies on the rate of respiratory illness, with mixed results. Air pollution is not something that will go away on its own with the rate it is at now, but it is not too late to act against it. As our world stands today, the best solution thus far that we can work on individually is to reduce emissions, and to lobby to businesses and corporations that they should as well. This will not solve all respiratory illness around the globe, but it will be a small start to a bigger future in keeping the planet (and its humans) alive.
