Preksha Dhyana Human Body Part 2

Author(s): Jethalal S Zaveri
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

Page 92

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Pollution
In these days, in large cities, SMOG (smoke and fog) is a usual and inescapable phenomenon. Industry and automobiles spew a devil's brew of pollutants into the air. They include carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, oxides of sulphur, nitrogen and lead, and fluorine compounds. When weather conditions combine to concentrate these pollutants close to the ground level, the result is smog. The lungs of the modern city-dwellers are insidiously subjected to the corrosive and debilitating effects of pollutants every moment of every day and night. They create respiratory diseases and problems of all kinds especially emphysema, and may cause death of the very young and the very old. Carbon monoxide (CO) is a product of incomplete combustion and is present in the air through automobile exhausts, leaking furnaces and industrial fumes. Colourless, odourless and imperceptible, it is a particularly insidious and dangerous poison. And the worst danger presented by carbon monoxide in air is that compared to oxygen, it has several times greater affinity for reaction with haemoglobin, and it competes successfully with oxygen for being carried by the haemoglobin; and this reaction is not readily reversible. Thus haemoglobin-molecules that have combined with CO to form the compound carboxyhaemoglobin are just as effectively removed from their oxygen-carrying function as though the blood containing them had been lost from the body by haemorrhage. A victim of carbon monoxide poisoning may gradually succumb to the effects of lack of oxygen, without realizing anything is wrong. It is believed that the impairment of judgement caused in drivers by the effects of carbon monoxide in the air of congested streets and highways may be a major cause of automobile accidents.
Another type of pollution is that of water. A variety of dangerous chemicals such as caustics, solvents and other organic compounds from the industrial waste contribute largely to the pollution of water. We ourselves also contribute
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