Due to the presence of these chemicals in our rivers, toxic waste dumps in our fields, poisons in our groundwater, in the air we breathe, in the food we eat, all living species today carry at least 700 man-made chemical contaminants in their bodies. The results aren’t that well-hidden, though… cancers, deformed sex organs, falling sperm counts, aggressive behaviour and diminished intelligence.
Even after things stop working and you throw them away, they continue to pollute. In the electronic graveyards across India where old gadgets end up, there are children waist-deep in cables, keyboards and circuitry picking through a soup of hazardous chemicals (including lead and mercury) to find components or bits of metal they can sell. They breathe in dioxins as the PVC cables and casings burn around them. They stop drinking from local wells polluted with heavy metals.
How Can We Help !!
One way to reduce the amount of toxic stuff around you is to reduce the amount of stuff you buy. A disposable diaper takes 450 years to biodegrade (or be decomposed by bacteria and other living organisms and go back into the Earth). What if you used the old-fashioned cloth and soap-water alternative to keep your baby’s bum clean?
Don’t have babies? Okay, have you ever bought a bottled drink? If that bottle is made of glass, it’ll take 1 million years to biodegrade. If it’s made of plastic, it will NEVER biodegrade. What if you just bought fresh fruit juice instead of the one in a carton? What if you carried your own water in a flask instead of buying the bottled one?
You can reduce, reuse and recycle. But frankly, if you’re really concerned about the poisons in our air, water and soil, the best thing to do is refuse. Stop buying stuff you simply want but don’t really need. Try it sometime. It works.
source: http://www.earthvote.org/say-no-to-toxics.aspx
