Pollution

Pollution

            Pollution which often called environment pollution are disposal of any form of energy such as chemical that can be found in a form of liquid, solid or gas which can cause harm to the environment (Jerry, 2010). Pollution are often caused by substance that are contaminated with various of harmful substance such as carbon monoxide which lead to serious problem if a huge amount of these substance is expose to the environment. Substances which are harmful are called pollutant. These pollutants are created through 2 different ways, either naturally occur like volcano ash or pollutant that have been created by humans like open burning of forest.

            There are many types of pollution that becoming a serious issue in Malaysia. Air pollution are one of the most common pollution that often occur in Malaysia. The presence of pollutants of air such as carbon monoxide, sulphur is one of the most common causes of air pollution. According to The Star News, Malaysians are now facing a critical issue with the quality of the air in their country as the haze are ruining it. For the past 2 weeks, there have been a rise in the number of patients being admitted due to haze that causes respiratory problems among the citizen. Asthma cases around the country were said to be increasing as the Air Pollution Index (API) are increasing day by day. Asthma cases rise up 15.8% from 1187 to 1375 for the past two weeks (“Haze causing a spike in respiratory problems”2019). The presence of haze also has caused a disturbance in the water supply of Selangor. This is due to the contaminated substances that dissolve into the water supply causes the water to be polluted. This causes over 372 031 users in Petaling Street to face their day with no water supply for the time being due to environmental pollution (Water cuts in Selangor due to pollution, 2019). If such pollution is prolonged, it will cause a serious problem to the health of the citizen especially children and infants. Their respiratory system is fragile compared to the adult which can still handle a hazardous air pollution. These might lead to serious death if we didn’t take a proper care of our environment.

            Next, water pollution or river pollution often occur in Malaysia especially in rural areas. Water pollution occur when some irresponsible individual disposes their chemical waste into the river or the water supply. This will cause the aquatic creatures such as fish and aquatic plants destroyed. Since the river is the water supply in some rural areas, it might cause some serious sickness if the water is being consume by the villagers. The disposal of chemical waste occurs due to several factors. One of them is because the cost to dispose chemical waste are high compare to disposing it into the river. As we know, the cost of disposing the chemical are expensive. This is due to difficulty of disposing chemical that are highly radioactive and contaminated. Most of the chemical waste cost around 80 000$ to execute all the process of disposing the chemical waste such as oil. These cost does not include the preparation cost of the tools to dispose the chemical waste. Hence, to avoid spending more money on disposal of those hazardous chemical waste, the irresponsible company decides to throw it into our mother nature such as river and our forest. These actions should be prevented. If such pollution is prolonged, it might cause our beautiful diversity of aquatic creatures and trees to be destroyed. This also give a bad impact to human as the presence of oxygen will be lesser than carbon dioxide. Due to more presence of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, the ozone layer will eventually begin thinning which would cause global warming. Global warming will cause the temperature of the surrounding to rise. This will affect not just citizen of Malaysia, but global.

            Sound pollution or also known as noise pollution are also consider a type of pollution occur in Malaysia. Sound are measure in Decibel (dB) which exceeds 50 dB are consider to be loud and are count as sound pollution. Although it might sound ridiculous that sound is included in the pollution, yet it this pollution can bring a bad impact to the citizen which are facing this pollution. One of it is this pollution can cause heart disease. There will be an increment of citizen with coronary artery disease and animal’s population are disturbed because of the loudness cause disturbance for the animal to continue breeding. Animal need a calm and peaceful atmosphere before they start to copulate. The loudness will somehow make animals to be uncomfortable to continue the reproduction process. This might also to extinction of animals if this pollution is prolonged. Kuala Lumpur are one of the cities that often face this kind of pollution. A hard rock concert which often held at Kuala Lumpur can exceed 100dB are dangerous to the human. Traffic jam problem which often occur in the capital city of Malaysia are also one of the causes of sound pollution as these vehicles start to use their hon which are quite loud. This loudness can also lead to high blood pressure problems among the senior citizen. This can be harmful and dangerous as senior citizen are too old to face this kind of disease. Other than that, children which are expose to sound pollution have a chance to get a permanent hearing injury as children are fragile compared to the adults. It can be a serious problem if our younger generation had to face the rest of their life with hearing injury as they are still young.

            Every problem has its own solution. One of the solutions that can be done by the government is by reducing the cost of disposing chemical waste. These costs will lessen the burden of the company to pay for disposal of chemical and encourages the company to have their chemical waste dispose properly. A proper disposal of chemical from the industry can really contribute a lot so that our environment will be much healthier. The government should provide a specific place for the industries to dispose their chemical. This will make sure that they won’t throw the pollutant into an inappropriate place such as forest and river. The government should enforce the law that are related to environment. Criminal that involve in environment get the same punishment as the normal criminal. Higher compound should be given to those criminals so they will think twice before they think about destroying our beautiful mother nature. Committee like Neighbourhood Watch should be established all over Malaysia housing area. This committee can help the government to prevent open burning that pollutes our quality of air. These committee will also aid government to provide proper observation so that all the pollution that comes from the factories and neighbourhood can be avoided.

Next, the government can also promote awareness campaign to spread the awareness of preserving our environment as it never too late to keep our environment healthy as it used to be. Although it might cost a lot for the government to held this event or campaign, the benefits also worth the money as environment cannot be replace using money. The citizen should cooperate in order to keep our environment healthy by supporting the campaign held by the government. Conducting green campaign in school all over Malaysia helps to promotes the awareness of keeping our environment healthy. Students get to learn about the reduce recycle and reuse campaign which can give a good impact as the student learn how to separate the waste materials. These campaigns are proven to be effective as it teaches all of our citizen on how to separate the waste. Instead of throwing recyclable waste, the community can separate the waste so that recyclable waste can be sent to recycle centre. This can help to reduce the pollution of the environment as less material is uses to create a new production of item such as glass bottle.

Besides, the government should also stop the usage of products that uses too much Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) especially mosquitoes spray in the market. This pollutant causes the ozone layer become thinner. As the sun strikes these elements, it causes the carbon-chlorine bond to breaks which produces chlorine element that reacts with ozone (O3) and causes it to thin day by day. This is dangerous as ozone layer protects us from UV ray which can cause cancer to those people that exposes too much to UV rays.

Next, replanting tree campaign can be organized in the school or universities in order to cover up for the excessive logging that causes a lot of trees to be cut for the purpose of development of buildings in Malaysia. The government should establish more national park so that our we can retain and preserve our biodiversity. By planting trees, we can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that have been released by the vehicles and factories. It also an alternative way to stop global warming and climate change in our country. Other than that, government should double the amount of public transport to encourage people to stop using their own car to travel. This will contribute a lot as the amount of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide release by the vehicle are greatly reduced as everyone use public transport. Lowering the cost of the public transport also one of the ways to promote people use the facilities of public transport as it is more convenient and cheap compare to driving their own car to work. Public transport services such as train should be enhanced and improve so that people will enjoy to use public transport rather than own vehicle.

Lastly, the authority should improvise the place where the concert or even are usually being held. All these events should be held away from the housing area and forest. This is due to sound pollution can cause really serious impacts on living thing especially animals. By changing the open hall structure of event to a closed building will really helps to reduce the noise pollution. Upgrading the materials to sound absorbing material will really help to reduce the sound pollution. Although sound pollution can’t be avoided, but we can reduce the effects of sound pollution towards animals as they are facing extinction especially the endangered species such as tiger.

In conclusion, I have learnt that keeping our environment healthy are important to secure a better healthy lifestyle. It is better to preserve the environment before it is fully destroyed by the greediness of human that resulting to destruction of our mother nature. It is also important to keep our environment healthy as unhealthy environment only brings more bad impacts rather than the good ones. Hence, Malaysian have to cooperate among themselves to keep our environment healthy and reduce the amount of pollution that have been occurring for the past few years.