Pollution in Hong Kong

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Pollution in Hong Kong
2
Introduction

• Pollution problems in Hong Kong are similar to
  those encountered in most comparable urban areas
  elsewhere in the world. Aspects that have given
  rise to public concern include emissions from
  motor vehicles and industries various water
  pollution black spots and the continuing need to
  dispose, in an environmentally satisfactory
  manner, of the large amount of sewage and solid
  wastes generated by the community that cannot be
  reused or recycled.

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Air Pollution
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Air Pollution
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Definition of Air Pollution

• Air pollution occurs when the concentrations of
  certain substances become high enough to toxify
  the atmospheric environment.

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Types of Air Pollution

• Primary Pollutants Consists of materials
  dust, gases, liquids and other solids) that enter
  the atmosphere through natural and human-made
  events. The main primary pollutants influencing
  our atmosphere in order of emission are carbon
  monoxide, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides,
  volatile organic compounds, and particulate
  matter.

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Types of Air Pollution

• Secondary Pollutants Consists of primary
  pollutants that have reacted with each other or
  with the basic components of the atmosphere to
  form new toxic substances

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Effects of Air Pollution

• . forest fires
• volcanic action
• lightning
• decreased visibility due to yellowish color of
  NO2
• NO2 contributes to heart and lung problems
• NO2 can suppress plant growth
• decreased resistance to infection
• may encourage the spread of cancer

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Effects of Air Pollution

• all combustion processes account for only 5 of
  NO2 in the atmosphere, most is formed from
  reactions involving NO
• concentrations likely to rise in the future
• Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)
• evaporation of solvents
• evaporation of fuels
• incomplete combustion of fossil fuels

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Effects of Air Pollution

• naturally occurring compounds like terpenes from
  trees
• eye irritation
• respiratory irritation
• some are carcinogenic decreased visibility due to
  blue-brown haze
• the effects of VOCs are dependent on the type of
  chemical

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Effects of Air Pollution

• samples show over 600 different VOCs in
  atmosphere concentrations likely to continue to
  rise in future
• Ozone (O3)
• formed from photolysis of NO2
• sometimes results from stratospheric ozone
  intrusions
• bronchial constriction
• coughing, wheezing

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Effects of Air Pollution

• respiratory irritation
• eye irritation
• decreased crop yields retards plant growth
  damages plastics breaks down rubber harsh odor
• concentrations of 0.1 parts per million can
  reduce photosynthesis by 50
• people with asthma and respiratory problems are
  influenced the most can only be formed during
  daylight hours

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Effects of Air Pollution

• Peroxyacetyl Nitrates (PAN)
• formed by the reaction of NO2 with VOCs (can be
  formed naturally in some environments)
• eye irritation
• high toxicity to plants
• respiratory irritation
• damaging to proteins
• was not detected until recognized in smog
• higher toxicity to plants than ozone

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Noise Pollution
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Definition of Noise Pollution

• Noise pollution means unwanted and damaging
  sound that pollute the environment.

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Noise Pollution

• Noise pollution is caused by
• Aircraft taking off and landing at the airport.
• Traffic.
• Machinery on construction sites, particularly
  drills and pile-drivers.
• Factory machinery.
• Air-conditioning.
• Discotheque music, radio, cassette-recorder,
  television sets, etc.

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Effects of Noise Pollution

• How dangerous is noise pollution?Noise pollution
  can make people nervous. It can prevent people
  from concentrating on their work. It can prevent
  people from sleeping. It can change a man's
  physiological state by speeding up pulse and
  respiratory rates, and it can damage hearing
  permanently or temporarily. Millions of
  industrial workers are threatened with hearing
  damage. There is medical evidence that noises can
  cause heart attacks in individuals with existing
  cardiac injury and that continued exposure to
  loud noises could cause such chronic effects as
  hypertension or ulcers.

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Land Pollution
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Land Pollution

• Land is very important. The land gives us food,
  paper, lumber, glass, metals, and many other
  things. Look around you. Everything you see
  started in the soil or rocks. Land is very
  precious, it is something that should be
  cherished and protected. But we don't always do
  this. We waste everything the land provided for
  us so that the land must produce even more.

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Land Pollution

• Our waste ends up in garbage dumps that takes up
  and destroys more and more land every day. Waste
  is a form of pollution. It is litter when we toss
  it on the streets and in our parks carelessly it
  adds to the garbage dumps when we throw it away
  in the garbage it pollutes our water when we
  dump it down the drain it clogs up our
  atmosphere when we burn it.

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Land Pollution

• Hills and mountains in Hong Kong are now
  threatened by uncontrolled exploitation by human
  beings. They are being used to reclaim the sea,
  build buildings and other uses. When a hill or
  mountain is cleared, many plants and animals lose
  their homes. They must leave or die. Instead, the
  hills become a flat land and are filled with a
  lot of buildings and streets. The men in the
  buildings produce more wastes, and thus pollute
  more the land we live.

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Effects of Land Pollution

• Everything we throw away has to go somewhere.
  Some of solid wastes are burned, but burning of
  wastes will pollute the air. So most of them ends
  up the landfills. But the landfills in Hong Kong
  which are nearly full. At the same time, we have
  been producing more and more wastes, including
  chemicals and nuclear material, that will be
  around for a very long time and be incredibly
  dangerous. Soon, there will be no more room to
  put all of our garbage.

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Effects of Land Pollution

• According to the information provided by Agenda
  21, the amount of solid waste produced will
  increase four to five times by 2025. If we do
  nothing to change this, Hong Kong will be
  engulfed in a mountain of waste and pollutants!
  Can you think about when you are living around
  mountains of rubbish!

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Solutions to Land Pollution

• Actually there is a clear solution to the waste
  problem waste should not be produced in the
  first place. We've got used to waste as simply a
  fact of life

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Solutions to Land Pollution

• but in fact waste is always a big mistake.
  Industry can and should introduce ways of making
  thing without producing waste.
• What can you do? Here are some ideas that you can
  do to help our environment
• Don't drop litter.
• Ask people to keep your neighborhood a "
  litter-free zone."
• Organize your friends to do a litter pick up in
  your neighborhood.

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Solutions to Land Pollution

• Don't allow your pets to foul up the lawns or
  local parks. If it does, be sure to clean it up.
• Ask your parents to make sure the cleaners they
  use are biodegradable. (substances that will
  break down quickly and cause no pollution)
• Look out for things at home that can be recycled.
  (aluminium foil, tin cans, glass bottles, plastic
  bags, newspapers and bottles)
• Ask your friends to concern about the
  environment.
• Plant in you home.

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Water Pollution
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Water Pollution

• Water pollution is increasingly becoming a large
  problem that we as humans need to confront. Water
  is our most valuable resource. Just think of how
  much we humans are dependent upon clean water .
• Besides the fact that we drink the water, we use
  it for irrigation of farm fields, cooking,
  washing clothes, flushing toilets, etc. and every
  industrial process requires water to function.
  Everyone knows

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Water Pollution

• that the Earth's surface is covered by 70 water,
  so why fuss over protecting water? Only 3 of all
  water is fresh and drinkable and of that 3, 75
  is frozen in polar ice caps, which leaves a grand
  total of only 1 of the Earth's surface water
  that is readily available for consumption After
  taking that fact into account, one can see why
  the conservation and protection of our remaining
  water supply is so vital. Before water pollution
  can be stopped, the sources of the pollution must
  be known.

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Water Pollution

• The major sources of water pollution are organic
  pollution, agricultural pollution, runoff, toxic
  waste, and thermal pollution.
• Organic pollution is becoming more and more
  pressing on the environment, because of the
  growing population of the world. It's a simple
  concept, the more people there are in one area,
  the more waste they will produce. For example, in
  a

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Water Pollution

• city there are so many people that the sewage
  plants and the environment can't take care of all
  of the waste and function in its usual manner The
  sewage plants do their best, but the secondary
  discharge that gets into the water supply causes
  great problems. The excess waste acts as a food
  source for algae and the growth rate is
  uncontrollable. The algae will deposit on the
  shore and the water is clouded with algae. This
  situation is known as

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Water Pollution

• eutrophication, When excess waste is added to the
  water the body of water can no longer control the
  growth of the algae and the water soon becomes
  algae ridden and oxygen depleted. The water
  becomes oxygen depleted, because the dead algae
  goes to the bottom and uses the oxygen in the
  deeper water to decompose, but if there is too
  much dead algae all the oxygen is depleted.

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Solutions to Water Pollution

• In some cases people don't know that they are
  even polluting. Through education valuable
  information can be distributed. Education in
  schools has already begun for the next
  generation. Schools go on field trips to sewage
  plants to see how they work There is no reason to
  stop at the school level. Adults can also be
  educated at local meetings, newspapers,
  television, etc. The faster the people become
  educated the faster the reduction of water
  pollution can occur.

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Solutions to Water Pollution

• Many people ask that can I do to help ? The
  answer is simple, become educated about water
  pollution and use common sense. Think before you
  dump any chemicals into a drain or on the ground
  and ask yourself, There will these chemicals end
  up at ? Conserve water by reducing those long
  wasteful showers, turning off the water when it
  isn't in use, don't over water your lawn, etc.
  Remember that water is like gold, so treat it
  like gold and don't

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Solutions to Water Pollution

• waste an ounce. Every action has a consequence,
  so before you dispose of anything think of
  whether the consequence is going to be
  destructive or beneficial to you and the
  environment.
• Water is a necessity of life and it needs to be
  conserved and protected. If we value life as we
  know it, we need to change our way of life and
  look at water in a different way. Educate
  yourself and a friend and help stop the
  contamination of our most priceless commode,
  WATER.

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Suggestions to the Government and the
Industrialists

• Here are also some advice to the government and
  industrialists Soap Processing that uses
  coconut oilAt present, soap and detergent
  industries in the country used hard alkyl benzene
  (HAB) as the major raw material for production.
  Studies showed that HAB should be banned because
  it is a pollutant. It aggravates the a pollution
  of our soil, ground water supply and our marine
  resources. This stand was based on a three to
  nine years study of the principal rivers Metro
  Manila..

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Suggestions to the Government and the
Industrialists

• The EEC banned the use of HAB in detergents
  because it failed to meet the minimum level of
  biodegradability of 80. Fifty nine countries of
  the world, including USA and Japan, have banned
  the use of HAB for commercial detergents. It is
  unthinkable that Hong Kong should continue to use
  HAB to produce detergents especially when there
  is a better substitute available. In place of
  hard alkyl benzene, consumer groups and
  ecologists advocate the use of coconut oil. Coco
  chemicals are superior and safe base material in
  making soap by cold process.

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Suggestions to the Government and the
Industrialists

• Biogas is produced out of fruit peels, food
  left-over, or animal manure in a digester with an
  integrated or separated gas holder. Animal manure
  like carabao or cow dung or fruit peels are
  initially mixed in a slurry for charging into the
  digester. To hasten the initial fermentation,
  microbes of water are added. Fermentation
  proceeds at a fast rate initially and levels off
  after 28 days. Then sludge and effluent are
  mixed. The sludge is either in dry or wet form
  that can be used as feed supplement for livestock
  or

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Suggestions to the Government and the
Industrialists

• as fertilizer. The effluent can be used for
  chlorella culture and also liquid fertilizer
  after aeration. Aside from yielding fertilizer
  and feed by-products, biogas reduces the cost of
  energy especially when compares to the costs
  incur red with the use of LPG and electricity

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Suggestions to the Government and the
Industrialists

• Biogas TechnologyOrganic wastes such as fruit
  peels and house hold left-over continue to pose
  problems to garbage collectors and urban
  planners. A viable solution to this is the biogas
  technology that makes use of organic wastes to
  produce a kind of fuel called biogas. Biogas is
  produced by the fermentation of organic wastes in
  the absence of oxygen and has the following
  composition methane, nitrogen, carbon monoxide
  and other gases. It is a good substitute for
  liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), gasoline, kerosene
  and electricity.

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Suggestions to the Government and the
Industrialists

• Tissue cultureVital environment concern today is
  our denuded forests. We have to replant trees and
  we have to do it now. Raising of fruit trees and
  forest species likes grapes, palm, and coffee
  trees can be done at fast rate by means of tissue
  culture. Stem cutting used to be one of the means
  of propagating plants. Now a single potato can
  reproduce a million plantlets within a year, a
  sugar cane can grow callus indefinitely, a

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Suggestions to the Government and the
Industrialists

• coconut can sprout tiny clumps of cells. One can
  also culture citrus into a thousand embryos for
  large plantation, breed eucalyptus tree in green
  houses for reforestation.
• On the side of the government, there is a need
  for a strong political will to enforce
  environment laws so as to check the abuse and
  neglect of the environment. Local authorities
  should strictly enforce laws and ordinances on
  pollution control measures for industries, as
  well as proper garbage disposal.

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Everyones responsibility

• The environment is not the only one suffering, we
  also suffer from death and diseases due to
  damaged environment. Unless we act fast to
  protect and heal the scared Earth, we shall all
  bear the brunt of our own carelessness.