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工业文明的发展在给人类带来物质财富的同时,却也不可避免地给地球造成了严重的环境污染问题,人类的健康正因此受到严重的威胁,中国癌症村和癌症县的出现便是一个例证。盲目地发展经济使得某些城镇家园尽毁,而居民要么流离失所,要么疾病缠身,严重的甚至要付出生命的代价。警钟已然敲响,人类该如何应对?
Climate change may get most of the attention, but the biggest environmental risk to human health today isn’t global warming. It’s industrial pollution, often in poor cities and towns where factories, power plants and chemical facilities face little to no regulation. A new report from the Blacksmith Institute1)—an NGO that addresses industrial pollution—estimates that industrial pollution poses a health risk to more than 200 million people around the world, often through elevated levels of cancer, respiratory2) disease and other illnesses. The report names ten of the most polluted places on the planet, which range from the oil-contaminated Niger Delta in Nigeria to the badly polluted Soviet-era industrial town of Dzerzhinsk in Russia. Life in these places can be short and brutal, but the good news is that cleaning up this sort of old industrial pollution is often much cheaper and easier than dealing with the pervasive3) problem of climate change. The international community just has to make it happen.
人们对气候变化可能最为关注,但如今威胁人类健康的最大环境问题并非全球变暖,而是工业污染——这些污染往往发生在对工厂、电厂和化学设施几乎没有监管的贫困城镇。致力于解决工业污染的非政府组织布莱克史密斯研究所在其新报告中估测,工业污染对全球两亿多人口的健康造成了威胁,通常表现为癌症、呼吸系统疾病及其他疾病发病率的居高不下。该报告指出了全球十大环境污染最严重的地区,从尼日利亚境内受到石油污染的尼日尔河三角洲,到前苏联时期受到严重污染的俄罗斯工业小镇捷尔任斯克都“榜上有名”。这些地区的居民寿命较短且所处环境恶劣,不过好在治理这些遗留下来的工业污染往往比应对普遍存在的气候变化问题花费少得多,也容易得多。只是国际社会必须行动起来,进行治理。
Agbogbloshie, Ghana 阿格博格布洛西(加纳)
We think of our cell phones and laptops as clean technology, but they contain trace4) amounts of valuable metals like copper and gold. And when junked electronics are processed by the very poor, out in the open, they can lead to dangerous levels of pollution. That’s what happens at the Agbogbloshie dump site outside Accra, the capital of Ghana. Sheathed cables5) are burnt in the open to get at the copper material inside, often using Styrofoam6) packaging as fuel. Those cables contain heavy metals like lead, which can migrate from the smoke into the soil. Samples taken from around Agbogbloshie indicate lead levels as high as 18,125 parts per million7)—as much as 45 times higher than U.S. standards. As many as 250,000 Ghanaians might be at risk.
我们认为我们的手机和笔记本电脑属于清洁技术,但其实它们含有微量的贵重金属,例如铜和金。而穷人们露天处理废弃的电子产品时会造成危害性极强的污染。在位于加纳首都阿克拉城外的阿格博格布洛西垃圾场就发生了这样的事情。人们为了得到电缆内部的铜,经常用聚苯乙烯泡沫塑料包装作燃料,露天燃烧铠装电缆。那些电缆中含有的铅之类的重金属能够从烟雾中迁移到土壤里。对阿格博格布洛西周边地区进行的采样显示,铅的含量高达18,125 ppm,这是美国铅含量标准的45倍,可能威胁到多达25万加纳人。