THE WORLD IN DANGEROUS.
A Polluted Air
How would you like to wake up to the smell of bad eggs?
Rumiya Dzhenblatova’s family lives in southern Russia, near the largest chemical factory in the world.
In Rumiya’s living room there are five large round yellow balls hanging on the wall.
Inside each ball there is a gas mask.
“When I see Luisa’s nose bleeding,
I know it’s the gas again.
If we are too slow to put on the masks, we feel sick,’’ say Rumiya.
B Polluted Seas
All our seas and oceans are polluted, but the Barents and Kara Seas, south of the Arctic Ocean, are more polluted than all the others.
It is amazing how much waste has been dumped there.
It is known that 14 nuclear reactors, one nuclear submarine with fuel and thousands of barrels of chemicals have been sunk there.
It’s not certain what this has done to the environment, but Norwegian scientists believe that in some places there is enough radioactive material in the Arctic food chain to destroy whole families of sea life.
C Polluted Earth
When certain gases mix with water in the atmosphere, they become acid rain.
This can kill forests hundreds of miles away from the factories that make the gases.
Then nothing can grow in the soil.
Apart from acid rain the earth is also polluted by the chemicals that come from some old factories.
Lead is one of the very dangerous metals that often gets into the soil and into the vegetables we eat.
When these vegetables are eaten, the lead in them stays in the body and is particularly dangerous for children.
D Saving the World
Just saying you are shocked by pollution is not enough. Everyone must do something to protect the environment.
Clean Up the World is an organization that works with the United Nations.
It has groups in many countries, including Greece.
Clean Up Greece has an office in Athens and has been working to save the environment since 1993.
Through education Clean Up Greece tells companies, the government and the public (especially young people) about the different ways to protect the environment.
The idea is that today’s children, who will become tomorrow’s decision-makers, will know what to do to prevent the destruction of our surroundings.
E Making a Difference
You may think that your efforts will not be helpful enough because you’re just one person, but you are wrong.
If everyone is careful about what they throw away, there will be fewer garbage dumps and the environment will benefit.
We should use the “R theory,” which stands for reduce, reuse, recycle and refuse.
First, reduce means having less garbage than usual by eating snacks like bananas and oranges that are not in packets.
Second, reuse means using plastic bags and bottles again, possibly to keep things in.
Third, recycle means using old things to make new ones and using certain vegetables to improve the soil in our gardens.
Finally, refuse means not using products that are harmful to the environment.