Question

While waiting at an airport, Neil Campbell once overheard this claim: "It’s paranoid and ignorant to worry about industry or agriculture contaminating the environment with their chemical wastes. After all, this stuff is just made of the same atoms that were already present in our environment." Drawing on your knowledge of electron distribution, bonding, and emergent properties (see Concept 1.1), write a short essay (100–150 words) countering this argument

Answer 1

That is right.

These substances are part and parcel of earth but the problem is that we are releasing them into the environment in new combinations that do not naturally exist .

Take the plastic bag for instance. It will eventually return to its original components but it takes a hundred years. In those hundred years it can kill thousands of animals which consume it, it promotes spreading of malaria when it accumulates rain water where mosquito eggs hatch and it looks revolting when dumped.