The disposal of toxic waste is a major problem in our society today. It affects many things from the human body, animals, environment, and most importantly the air. Most of the toxic waste today comes from factories around the world disposing of their chemicals improperly. Although factories play a major roll in this issue everyday civilians are also a responsible party. Lead and mercury are one of the most dangerous chemicals that are disposed of imporporly by factories. These two chemcials play a big role in the negative effect in our environment today. With easy access to these dangerous chemicals how can we trust that workers are disposing of them properly? Lead and mercury are found in a variety of products such as car batteries, computers, paint, light bulbs, etc. When these items are not disposed of properly they can find their way into our bodies, water, and even the ground we walk on. When lead and mercury are released into the air humans and animals proceed to breathe them in which can lead to major health risks such as lead or mercury poisoning. When these toxic chemicals get into the water or soil they leak into plants and fish. This is not good as to these are things we eat to survive. Each factory has a specific procedure to disposing of harsh chemicals.( research a few ways they shud b disposed of properly)….. Some of our hazardous waste has been known to be exported to Mexico because it is cheaper to dispose of them there. Although factories are trying to save money, it is not a wise choice as Mexico has been known to dispose of chemicals carelessly. An example of this would be workers digging holes and dumping the chemicals into landfills, resulting in the products being released into our soil and water. 20 million car batteries containing lead are going to cross the border to Mexico this year and we cannot be sure that they will be disposed of properly. Although factories play a major role in irresponsibly disposing of chemicals everyday civilians play a role as well. To dispose of common household items such as a old computer or broken car parts or even a dead light bulb it costs money to bring it to a local dump to be taken care or properly. A common act is to throw these items in the bottom of a trash bag or lazily hide them in the woods so they don’t have to pay the fine. The U.S. government alone disposes of ten thousand computers a week and if not disposed of properly there is a higher possibility that lead and mercury from these items are going to be leaked into our environment.
Before a certain time the world was unaware of how harsh these chemicals really were and were tossing them into landfills. These chemicals can retain there for as long as two thousand years. As you can now imagine all the different chemicals that have been dumped into our soil and water system over time. They are still remaining there today and continuing to affect the area, these are the parts of the earth that we interact with everyday. I know one company alone that I worked for that has an old chemical dumping ground that is caged off. Every year the soils get tested until its safe again. This is also one of the thousands of factory we have in the world and one that we all live near. As technology and production continues to grow faster as time goes on we need to be more aware of how factories and society is disposing of toxic waste. We can never be fully safe from the harsh realities that come with all the chemicals in todays world. As safe as we try to be we still have accident like oil spills in the ocean or individuals carelessly tossing objects that contain mercury or lead around just to save a few dollars. As it is hard to trust other individuals it is also hard to trust other countries and subcontractors to dispose of our hazardous material properly. With all the evidence I believe that toxic waste is a problem we cannot escape. We can only try to prevent it, as it has such a horrible affect on every living thing in our world. As it continues to have a negative effect I strongly believe that people need to be more concencious of how they are disposing of toxic waste.