Man and His Environment

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Over the last few years I have noticed the environment becoming more and more cluttered. This might be because my intelligence has risen and I have noticed details about my environment. I have noticed little things such as some sort of dirt surface lightly covering the side of my house. At first I thought this texture was soil that had blown up in the wind, but after more observation of the wind and air I noticed I was wrong. So I thought the soil was actually smoke coming from a factory that was just less then a mile from my house.

Since I live in the small community of Dowagiac, Michigan I ruled the cause of air pollution out when first investigating. In my mind I placed the blame of the earth substance on a crop duster and his pesticides. Farmers are always in a confrontation with insects because of their annihilation of crops. Farmers will use chlorinated hydrocarbons to spray their harvests, which are poisons to insects as well as any fish, birds, invertebrates, and mammals (Turk pg. 43). This is something a small town boy shouldn't have to be concerned about. He can't catch fish because there all dead, he can't hunt because his prey is dead, and he is in fear of his health.

In 1954 several eastern Illinois communities were sprayed aerially in attempt to kill Japanese beetles. In this effort, numerous "species of birds were almost completely annihilated, ground squirrels were almost eradicated, most farm cats died, and some sheep were even killed"(Turk pg. 43). Yet the Japanese beetles continued to move west. After this a bird or animal may come and eat a chemical infected insect causing them to become sick and die. This could even corrupt the food chain by transporting the pest chemicals in to a human b...

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...his keeps up, the chemicals could penetrate the siding of my house causing vast expenses. Not everyone gets the privilege to notice these problems, so they often think nothing of it, but I think with time everyone will notice.

Bibliography

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Ray, Dixy Lee. Environmental Overkill. Washington D.C.: REGNERY GATEWAY,

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Turk, Amos. Ecology, Pollution, Environment. Philadelphia: Saunders Co., 1972

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