Global Health Issues - Essay Example

Crichton’s sentiments are echoed in the works of Santer and his Co-authors while human activities play a role in the changing global meteorological structure, it is not entirely to blame for the weather patterns. Writing for the IPCC in their 1996 paper, Santer and his co-authors said that the temperature change being experienced in the atmosphere is ‘partially due to human activity’.

In the movie, Day After Tomorrow, the climatologist, Jack Hall, predicts a reoccurrence of the ice age. In the prediction, the time of the ice age is estimated to occur in the next 100-1000 years. However, this can only be accelerated if the human activities that pollute the environment are not put on hold. This implies the conviction in Jack Hall of the significant contribution of human activities to global warming and global meteorological change.

With approximately 90% of human time spent indoors, the importance of quality outdoor air has been underestimated. Such negligence is due to ignorance of the number of pollutants one is exposed to whenever one gets into polluted outdoors. Nitrogen dioxide and ground-level ozone are some of the pollutants that are freely available in the heavily polluted outdoors.

The fact that many people tend to prefer performing their activities indoors is understandable given the ease of controlling the quality of indoor air. The factors such as home cleanliness, plant and pest presence, and home chemicals are within the control of the homeowners. However, performing activities such as exercising indoors does not help one with avoiding these pollutants.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) primary standards are essential in establishing ambient air quality. The Clean Air Act is one of the regulations applied by the EPA to ensure clean outdoor air. These standards are important in determining the pollution levels that are considered acceptable for outdoor air. Despite the availability of these standards and its best efforts, the EPA finds it difficult to control pollution resulting from the small scattered but cumulatively catastrophic sources. They are, however, able to control the emission from single concentrated places such as industries. Such large pollutants are referred to as point sources because their annual emissions are about 25 tons of numerous air pollutants. Facilities that contribute 10 tons of a particular toxic atmospheric pollutant annually are also a point source.