# data[].attributes.body
Resource listing of NYC organizations working on conservation and environmental justice

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Mission: NYC's construction and demolition industry throws away nearly 7,000,000 tons of building materials annually. These materials clog our landfills, release carbon into the atmosphere, and create an artificial need for more materials to be manufactured. By salvaging usable items from demolition and remodel projects and reintroducing them to the market, we take a small step toward eliminating these significant environmental costs. Our goal is to demonstrate another option for materials diversion and hopefully inspire the city to require recycling and reuse for construction and demolition waste. Substituting salvage for demolition allows us to generate green, living wage jobs and job training. The NYC Compost Project, hosted by Big Reuse, is part of a community-scale composting network that works to rebuild our soils by providing New Yorkers with the knowledge, skills, and opportunities they need to produce and use compost locally.

Website: https://www.bigreuse.org/service/volunteer/
Volunteer form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScWgZxNE4uBRcPbxqd57-WaZK4ZvU-07m1JnUaqLQbUR21ONA/viewform?vc=0&c=0&w=1&_ga=2.196228780.1817692846.1581920757-1914461130.1581741424
Phone: 718-725-8925 x2
Email: volunteer@bigreuse.org
What volunteers do:
Borough: Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx (Big Reuse warehouse only in Brooklyn)

Mission: The Brooklyn Movement Center (BMC) is a membership-led, direct-action, community organizing body based in Central Brooklyn (Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights and the surrounding area). We bring together residents to develop local leadership, identify important issues in their lives, win concrete improvements in the community, and build power. We establish relationships with a growing base of local people and mobilize them to: identify social and economic issues of critical importance to them; acquire the information and leadership skills necessary to transform our community; change local conditions and win concrete improvement in their lives; join broad coalitions and build alliances with other communities; create long-term, structural change through the reform of city, state, and national policies.

Website: http://brooklynmovementcenter.org/get-involved/
Phone: 718-771-7000
Email: n/a
What volunteers do: FYI:
Borough: Brooklyn

Mission: City Growers empowers young people to envision a greener and healthier future. We aim to close a fundamental gap in the experience of urban children by creating opportunities for them to meaningfully interact with the natural world and reconnect with food's origin from the earth. We want to see more green roofs, more community gardens, more urban farms, equal access to healthy food, cleaner air and waterways, and more innovative urban spaces to grow and learn. It is our duty and honor to provide today's children the tools and inspiration they need to change the world tomorrow. We see the children and teens that participate in our programs as the leaders, policymakers, engineers, teachers, farmers, and activists of tomorrow. Giving young people a new perspective on our urban environment activates imaginations and provides a new lens through which to view the potential of our city and world. Each day, City Growers is cultivating healthy, informed, dynamic change makers who understand the importance of real food, grown well.

Borough: Brooklyn, Queens

Mission: DataRefuge is an initiative committed to identifying, assessing, prioritizing, securing, and distributing reliable copies of endangered federal climate and environmental data so that it remains available to researchers. In conversation with many partners, such as you, we can build refuge for federal climate and environmental data vulnerable under an administration that denies the fact of ongoing climate change. We are committed to fact-based arguments, and #DataRefuge works to preserve the facts we all need. Data collected as part of the #DataRefugeinitiative will be stored in multiple, trusted locations to help ensure continued accessibility. DataRefuge acknowledges--and in fact draws attention to--the fact that there are no guarantees of perfectly safe information. But there are ways that we can create safe and trustworthy copies. DataRescue events create trustworthy copies of federal climate and environmental data and DataRefuge develops the best methods, practices, and protocols to archive them.

What volunteers do:

FYI:

useful skills include familiarity with government websites and information; library and archive skills; database navigation; organization and communication

in-person hackathons are scheduled for NYC but some work can be done remotely

non-tech volunteers can participate as researchers

Mission: Food & Water Watch champions healthy food and clean water for all. We stand up to corporations that put profits before people, and advocate for a democracy that improves people's lives and protects our environment. We are working to create a healthy future for our families and for generations to come-a world where all people have the resources they need, including wholesome food, clean water and sustainable energy. Making this happen requires organizing people from all over the country to build a large movement with the political power to make our democratic process work. Large numbers of people are a countervailing force to corporations "buying" public policy.

Website: http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/state/new-york
Volunteer signup: http://tinyurl.com/jdkkaqb
Phone: 347-778-2743
Email: n/a
What volunteers do:
Borough: Manhattan office

Mission: Our mission is to improve New York City's quality of life through environmental programs that transform communities block by block and empower all New Yorkers to secure a clean and healthy environment for future generations. Our network of Greenmarket farmers markets, Youthmarkets, fresh food box pick-ups and Greenmarket Co. ensures that all New Yorkers have access to the freshest, healthiest local food. We blanket the five boroughs with resources like textile and food scrap collection, Stop 'N' Swaps, and free training to make waste reduction easy for all.

Website: https://www.grownyc.org/individual-volunteering
Email: https://www.grownyc.org/about/contact
Phone: 212-788-7900

What volunteers do:

help with cooking demonstrations, farmer support, and community outreach at Greenmarkets

distribute Fresh Food Boxes

help with compost events to keep food waste out of landfills

facilitate community reuse events

conduct interactive recycling demonstrations

FYI:

Borough: All

Mission: Harlem Grown's mission is to inspire youth to lead healthy and ambitious lives through mentorship and hands-on education in urban farming, sustainability, and nutrition. Founded in 2011, we operate local urban farms, increase access to and knowledge of healthy food for Harlem residents, and provide garden-based development programs to Harlem youth. Healthy habits start young, which is why our programs target elementary-aged students. Because food justice is more than just providing and distributing food, our model seeks to positively impact the entire community through mentorship, job training, and partnerships to create sustainable change. One of the many ways we fulfill our mission is by raising support for the physical renovation of abandoned lots in Harlem, transforming them into thriving urban farms. Currently, we have 10 urban agriculture facilities ranging from soil-based farms, hydroponic greenhouses and school gardens.

Website: http://www.harlemgrown.org/volunteer/
Email: info@harlemgrown.org or to offer specialized skills, contact COO, Whitney Files, wfiles@harlemgrown.org
Phone: 212-870-0113

What volunteers do:

FYI:

Borough: Manhattan

Mission: The Ecology Center works toward a more sustainable New York City by providing community-based recycling and composting programs, developing local stewardship of green space, and increasing community awareness, involvement and youth development through environmental education programs. The Ecology Center offers services and education for a range of environmental subjects: organics collection/composting, electronic waste recycling, and stewardship of public green spaces. The Gowanus E-Waste warehouse is the largest non-municipal provider of e-waste recycling services in New York City. The warehouse accepts all varieties of consumer electronics, and reuses/recycles them in an environmentally and socially responsible way.

Website: http://www.lesecologycenter.org/volunteer/
Phone: 212-477-4022 or 718-858-8777 (for warehouse)
Email: info@lesecologycenter.org or reuse@lesecologycenter.org (for warehouse)
What volunteers do:
Borough: Manhattan, Brooklyn

Mission: Moms Clean Air Force is a community of 950,000 moms and dads united against air pollution - including the urgent crisis of our changing climate - to protect our children's health. We arm members with reliable information and solutions through online resources, articles, action tools, and on-the-ground events. We work across the US on national and local policy issues, through a vibrant network of 18 state-based field teams. Our moms meet with lawmakers at every level of government to build support for commonsense solutions to pollution. Moms have passion and power - an unbeatable combination. We are harnessing the strength of mother love to fight back against polluters.
What volunteers do:

Mission: Recycle-A-Bicycle (RAB) is a community-based bike shop and non-profit organization that facilitates job training and environmental education. Through innovative programs such as Earn-A-Bike, Green Jobs Training Programs, High School Internships, Recycled Arts Workshops, Summer Youth Employment Program, and Kids Ride Club, RAB is dedicated to the health, development, stewardship, and empowerment of NYC youth. On average, RAB salvages 1,800 bicycles each year from the waste stream, diverting a total of 45,000 pounds of waste from NYC's landfills. Every purchase from our storefronts directly supports our youth programs and environmental initiatives.

Website: http://www.recycleabicycle.org/volunteer
Email: http://www.recycleabicycle.org/contact
Phone: 718-858-2972

What volunteers do:
FYI:
Borough: Brooklyn and Queens

Mission: Weoppose the development, transport and export of fracked shale gas ("natural gas"). We support a rapid switch to renewable energy and the goal of zero fossil fuel dependence by 2030. Sane Energy Project is a grassroots group, formed in 2011 to oppose the Spectra pipeline. We have enlarged that mission to include shale gas infrastructure statewide and regionally. We stand in solidarity with activists fighting all forms of extreme extraction and nuclear energy.
What volunteers do:
Borough: Manhattan-based meetings

Mission: Swale is a floating food forest built atop a barge that travels to piers in New York City, offering educational programming and welcoming visitors to harvest herbs, fruits, and vegetables for free. Swale strives to strengthen stewardship of public waterways and land, while working to shift policies that will increase the presence of edible perennial landscapes. We hope to encourage New Yorkers to care for our common home and to address food as a commons in public space. Following the insights of Elinor Ostrom, Swale relies on the principle that commons can be sustainably managed where people know each other, trust each other, and work together in caring for a place. Swale is organized with the help of individuals, community groups, as well as city organizations in order to reinforce food and water as essential elements of a cooperatively stewarded commons. Swale calls attention to the collective use of New York City's land and waterways through public tours, workshops, and events.

Website: http://www.swaleny.org/volunteer/
Volunteer signup form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSerbnADKuFcwSjRGGp6kfWIUEKK51aDykHtW-LzJ5Hd6ZUOVA/viewform
Email: http://www.swaleny.org/contact/
Phone: n/a

What volunteers do:

FYI:

Mission: West Harlem Environmental Action, Inc. (WE ACT for Environmental Justice)is a Northern Manhattan community-based organization whose mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and/or low income participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices. Areas of work include affordable and equitable transit, clean air, climate justice, food justice, open and green spaces, sustainable and equitable land use, toxic-free products, waste, pests and pesticide reduction, and healthy homes.
What volunteers do:
Borough: Manhattan

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Mission: NYC's construction and demolition industry throws away nearly 7,000,000 tons of building materials annually. These materials clog our landfills, release carbon into the atmosphere, and create an artificial need for more materials to be manufactured. By salvaging usable items from demolition and remodel projects and reintroducing them to the market, we take a small step toward eliminating these significant environmental costs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This Is Inequity at the Boiling Point

It was a record 125 degrees Fahrenheit in Baghdad in July, and 100 degrees above the Arctic Circle this June. Australia shattered its summer heat records as wildfires, fueled by prolonged drought, turned the sky fever red.

For 150 years of industrialization, the combustion of coal, oil and gas has steadily released heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, driving up average global temperatures and setting heat records. Nearly everywhere around the world, heat waves are more frequent and longer lasting than they were 70 years ago.

But a hotter planet does not hurt equally. If you’re poor and marginalized, you’re likely to be much more vulnerable to extreme heat. You might be unable to afford an air-conditioner, and you might not even have electricity when you need it. You may have no choice but to work outdoors under a sun so blistering that first your knees feel weak and then delirium sets in. Or the heat might bring a drought so punishing that, no matter how hard you work under the sun, your corn withers and your children turn to you in hunger.

It’s not like you can just pack up and leave. So you plant your corn higher up the mountain. You bathe several times a day if you can afford the water. You powder your baby to prevent heat rash. You sleep outdoors when the power goes out, slapping mosquitoes. You sit in front of a fan by yourself, cursed by the twin dangers of isolation and heat.

Extreme heat is not a future risk. It’s now. It endangers human health, food production and the fate of entire economies. And it’s worst for those at the bottom of the economic ladder in their societies. See what it’s like to live with one of the most dangerous and stealthiest hazards of the modern era.

Photographs by Myrto Papadopoulos in Athens, Ilana Panich-Linsman in Houston, KC Nwakalor in the Niger Delta, Nigeria, Daniele Volpe in Jocotán, Guatemala, Saumya Khandelwal in Lucknow, India, and Juan Arredondo in New York City.

Heat waves are becoming more frequent in Athens. It’s toughest in the city’s treeless, concrete neighborhoods.

Photographs by
Myrto Papadopoulos

Hasib Hotak, 21, has been sleeping on a rooftop in Athens. To be precise, he has been sleeping on a carpet, under the stars, on a rooftop in Athens. There’s a small room on the roof, with a sheet of corrugated tin on top and a curtain for a door. The heat of the day turns it into an oven. It is suffocatingly hot to sleep inside. It belongs to a friend who, like Mr. Hotak, is a homeless Afghan refugee, and who sleeps on a bed on the roof, draped with a mosquito net.

In late July, peak summer in Athens, the sun burned the rooftop by midday. Mr. Hotak walked through the city to one of Athens’s largest public parks, Pedion Areos. Some days, he volunteered with an aid group that gives out sandwiches to homeless refugees like him. Other days, he sat under a wide-armed tree and scrolled through his phone. There aren’t a lot of places where a young Afghan man feels welcome in Athens, he said. Once, he and a friend went to a cafe, hoping to chat over a cup of coffee, only to be thrown out. The owner said Greeks wouldn’t patronize his establishment if they saw refugees at a table.

Mr. Hotak was 16 when he left his home in the Sholgara district of Afghanistan, the only one among his 11 brothers and sisters to do so. After one failed attempt to enter Europe and two years in a refugee camp, he was granted asylum in Greece. That’s when he arrived on the rooftop refuge with a friend, in the crowded warrens of Kolonos, a working class Athens neighborhood where many migrants have settled.

The city has grown hotter by the decade. According to temperature records kept by the National Observatory of Athens, there were fewer than 20 hot days (with temperatures over 99 degrees Fahrenheit, or 37 Celsius) from 1897 until 1906. By the mid-1980s, there were still fewer than 50 hot days per decade. From 2007 to 2016, though, the number had risen to 120 hot days.

Mr. Hotak cooled down at an Athens beach. Heat waves have increased fivefold in the city over the last century.

“I don’t feel welcome in the country. Whenever I go out people look at me like I’m a refugee. I don’t want that. I’m human.”

Houston is getting hotter, fast. Staying cool is an unaffordable luxury for the Rodriguez family.

Photographs by
Ilana Panich-Linsman

The air conditioner in her room gives Norma Rodriguez some breathing space at the end of a long day.

At 18, just out of high school, Ms. Rodriguez is working two jobs to help her family. One at a shoe store, the other at a restaurant. Her father, Candelario Rodriguez, a roofer by profession, is unemployed. The family’s truck has broken down, so she has to hustle for rides. Her mother, Dominga, is a part-time housekeeper in a nearby hotel where business is slow. Her brother, Noe, 9, is on summer vacation from school. Money is tight. Bills are juggled. Windows are covered during the day to keep out the sun. Air-conditioners are turned on only at night. Showers are limited to every other day.

The summer air is steamy in Houston. Even when you move slowly, you drip with sweat. When you’re working outdoors, in construction, as Norma’s father used to before the pandemic, sweat pools in your work boots. Three of his co-workers have collapsed from heat exhaustion over the years.

The perils of the past haunt them. Their East Houston neighborhood, home to mainly Latinos like the Rodriguez family, was hit particularly hard by Hurricane Harvey. The heat packed into the atmosphere brought exceptionally heavy rains, flooding the Rodriguez’s two-bedroom trailer and a car. They waded through floodwaters to be rescued by an 18-wheeler truck, Norma carrying a pet chicken and a cat in her backpack, and Dominga, who can’t swim, wearing a life jacket. “This year,” Dominga said, “we just hope there isn’t another hurricane.” Hurricane Hanna came close in July, but spared the city.

Houston is one of the country’s fastest warming cities. Average temperatures have risen by more than 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970. In mid-July, the city’s heat index peaked above 110 degrees. It offered a glimpse of the future. If emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise at their current pace, Houston could see 109 days each year, on average, where the heat index tops 100 degrees.

Norma worked on her college orientation one evening in July when the air-conditioner was turned on. She plans to begin as a freshman in the fall.

Her younger brother, Noe, had his own idea to keep the family cool: a squirt gun mounted on his bike.

Ms. Rodriguez, who plans to attend community college this fall, has more immediate concerns. A co-worker at the restaurant where she works complained of symptoms of the coronavirus in late July. He said he would get tested, and she hasn’t heard from him since. She needs the job, but she worries about getting sick — and even more about infecting her family.

“If I bring it home to my family, it’s something else for me to worry about,” Ms. Rodriguez said over the weekend. “If we’re all going to be sick, who’s going to take care of us?”

In Nigeria, rising temperatures are supercharged by nonstop gas flares. You can feel them singe the skin.

Photographs by
KC Nwakalor

Darkness never falls on Faith Osi’s village.

Five tall methane gas flares loom over Obrikom, in the heart of the oil-rich delta in southeastern Nigeria. They are part of the huge petrochemicals operations of the Italian multinational Agip, and they burn 24 hours a day, like blowtorches through the steamy tropical air.

It’s normally hot here. Temperatures reach 91 degrees Fahrenheit on average in the hot season and drop only slightly in the rainy months. The flares make it even hotter, even at night, and particularly if you’re too poor to live anywhere other than within a few hundred meters of the flares, where land is cheaper. One study found that temperatures were 22 degrees Fahrenheit higher around homes closest to the gas flares.

For decades, oil extraction has poisoned the air, land and water of the Niger Delta region, while its people have reaped little by way of jobs or development in the area.

Heat is arguably the least understood of these threats. It’s everyday. It’s invisible. And, for Ms. Osi, who is in her mid-30s, it’s exhausting.

It saps her. She can barely work for three hours a day on her cassava farm, and even then, she feels like she can hardly breathe. Headaches torment her often. Relief comes only from a bucket of cold water over her head.

It was worse when she was pregnant. She would pat her belly with a wet cloth. At night she would lay on the bare floor. The bed was too hot. She would barely sleep.

The other day, with the air clammy from the rains, she bathed the youngest of her eight children, Miracle, who is 1 year old. In minutes, Miracle was glistening with sweat and screaming from discomfort. Ms. Osi worried about heat rash. She emptied nearly a can of talcum powder on the baby.

Her husband, Azubuike Osi, 42, turned to cigarettes for relief. The kids flapped their clothes to air their bodies. They all try to sleep under the fan, at least until the electricity goes out, which it sometimes does on the hottest nights, and then some of the children sleep outside on the balcony, battling mosquitoes. Malaria is rampant.

The dangerous extremes of climate change are already affecting Nigeria’s poorest people. Hotter days and hotter nights are more frequent, while the number of cool days and nights has decreased, a trend that studies have observed throughout West Africa.

A bath gave Miracle a moment of cool comfort.

When the power goes out, some of Ms. Osi’s children sleep on the balcony.

The dry season is getting longer and drier in Guatemala. Indigenous farmers could see crop yields fall sharply.

Photographs by
Daniele Volpe

Eduardo Roque, 38, is among Guatemala’s original people, part of the Ch’orti Mayan community living in one of the poorest and driest corners of the Americas, known as the Dry Corridor.

Rising temperatures are ravaging the land.

The early summer rains that nourish his small fields have diminished measurably in recent years, according to scientists, and five long and harsh late summer droughts have cursed this region in the last decade. The country as a whole is warmer by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since 1960, with far more frequent hot days and nights. The rains don’t come when he needs them for his crop, Mr. Roque says. “When we need the sun, suddenly, we are receiving water.”

Mr. Roque’s harvests of corn and beans, staple foods, failed three years in a row. Desperate, he hustled for work in the capital, Guatemala City, bought a patch of land near a small creek, planted rows of corn there. On his old corn fields, he has planted trees, and in their shade, he is trying coffee.

Malnutrition runs higher in the largely indigenous region, called Chiquimula, where Mr. Roque lives with his wife and nine children. Water has to be rationed.

The amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the average Guatemalan each year is tiny — 1.1 metric tons, compared with 16.5 tons per person in the United States — and Mr. Roque’s carbon footprint is, very likely, smaller still. Electricity came to his village only recently. The family doesn’t have a car, motorcycle or tractor. He built his house by hand, from mud, with only a few pillars of concrete.

But Guatemala is poised to feel the effect of a hotter planet acutely. Yields of maize and beans could fall by around 14 percent by 2050, according to a recent study; coffee grown in lower elevations is unlikely to be “economically viable.”

Climate models project longer dry periods in the future.

“The models show that this should happen in the next decades,” said Edwin Castellanos, director of the center for environmental studies at the University of the Valley of Guatemala and a co-author of the study, “but it’s already happening.”

Eduardo’s grandparents, Magdaleno Roque, 78, and Eulofia Aldana, 64, live near his home.

A small but solid defender: Eduardo Roque, left, filmed his son Eddy, 2, on a parched soccer field.

India is already hot. An increase of just a few degrees can be dangerous for people who work outdoors.

Photographs by
Saumya Khandelwal

Rabita bends down, fills a bowl with sand, lifts it atop her head, climbs up and down the stairs. Up and down, countless times each day, even as the heat rises through the morning and the air gets sticky. Her legs ache from the climbing. Her head spins sometimes. Breaks can’t be longer than five minutes, or she’ll get a hectoring from the foreman on the construction site. Occasionally, she comes down with a fever and has to take a day off. When she’s on her period, it’s the worst.

The other day, she tried to shake the sand off herself, to no avail. The sweat had glued the sand to her skin.

Rabita, who does not use a surname, is helping to build a government housing project. She and her husband, Ashok Kumar, are Dalits, at the bottom of the Hindu caste ladder. They own no land in their village in Bihar, which has long been one of the most terrifying places to be a Dalit. They work on other people’s lands, when there is work, and Rabita gets paid less than half what a man makes.

And then there’s the extreme vagaries of the rain. It rains when it’s not supposed to, she says, and washes away the crops. People like her have to leave home to put food in their stomachs.

For years, Mr. Kumar had been working hauling sacks of vegetables at a city market, sending home money. The pandemic changed all that. Mr. Kumar came back home, borrowed money to make ends meet. Now he and Rabita work to pay off those debts. Their oldest son, Guddu, 15, works alongside them. Their 3-year-old, Sumari, hangs around.

Episodes of extreme humid heat at levels the human body cannot tolerate for many hours at a time have more than doubled in frequency since 1979, according to a recent scientific paper. South Asia and the Gulf Coast of the United States are among the places hardest hit. Sweat can’t evaporate as fast. The body can’t cool down.

The International Labor Organization calls heat an occupational health hazard, with construction workers like Rabita especially vulnerable. Most people can work only at half their capacity when temperatures exceed 91 degrees Fahrenheit, and exposure to many hours of heat can be fatal, the group warns.

Economic losses from heat stress are projected to increase to $2.4 trillion in 2030. But this cost, too, is expected to be unequally spread.

South Asia and West Africa are expected to be the worst affected, not just because of high heat and humidity, but because of how vulnerable laborers like Rabita are to begin with.

Watching sports on a phone on a day when the humidity made it feel like 107 Fahrenheit.

Rabita slept on a day off. The high for the day was 95 Fahrenheit.

Heat is the deadliest form of extreme weather for older Americans. In New York City, isolation is its sly accomplice.

Photographs by
Juan Arrendondo

On a sweltering Sunday in July, with temperatures soaring to 93 Fahrenheit, Rafael Velasquez, 66, sat in the courtyard of his apartment complex with a cold bottle of water pressed to his face. He liked sitting outside on a bench, feeding the pigeons. He kept a hand towel to wipe the sweat.

There wasn’t much to do inside. He’s lived alone since his wife died a couple of years ago. He can’t afford to buy an air-conditioner, and he said he had no idea how to get a free one from a city program designed to help seniors stay cool during the pandemic, when cooling centers are mostly closed.

He had a window fan in the living room, and one standing fan that he dragged from the bedroom to the living room every morning. Mostly, he watched stuff on his phone. He can’t afford cable.

In the United States, heat kills older people more than any other extreme weather event, including hurricanes, and the problem is part of an ignominious national pattern: Black people and Latinos like Mr. Velasquez are far more likely to live in the hottest parts of American cities.

His neighborhood is exceptionally vulnerable to heat extremes. According to the most recent available data, from 2018, Brownsville was among New York City’s hottest, with average daytime highs around two degrees Fahrenheit higher than the city as a whole.

Those neighborhoods are often the same areas that have faced some of the highest rates of coronavirus deaths. This spring, around 10 residents of Mr. Velasquez’s senior housing complex died from the virus.

“Inequality exacerbates climate and environmental risks,” said Kizzy Charles-Guzman, a deputy director for resilience efforts in the New York City Mayor’s office.

Isolation makes it worse.

With no one to check in on you, even a mild case of dehydration can take a quick turn for the worse if you’re frail or suffer from other ailments, like heart disease. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 600 Americans die each year from extreme heat. A recent academic study, though, estimated that as many as 12,000 people may be dying of heat-related ailments; 80 percent of them, the researchers said, are over the age of 60.

Mr. Velasquez, a retired hospital cook, spent most of his life in the Bronx.

When he applied for senior housing, he was offered an apartment in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville area of Brooklyn.

Mr. Velasquez’s five daughters live in the Bronx. He said he hadn’t seen them in months because of the pandemic.

The other day, when the city issued a heat alert and the senior center on the ground floor opened for the first time in months as a cooling center, he went to pick up two plastic bags of groceries: black beans, breakfast cereal, peanut butter and other provisions that would last.

He won a round of bingo, and a roll of paper towels as a prize.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Here’s What Extreme Heat Looks Like: Profoundly Unequal (Published 2020)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Earth is overheating. This year is poised to be one of the hottest ever. Millions are already feeling the pain, but the agony of extreme heat is profoundly unequal across the globe.

# data[].attributes.headline
What is fracking, and why is it controversial?

# data[].attributes.subject
What is fracking, and why is it controversial?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What is fracking and why is it controversial?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Rishi Sunak has announced he will reinstate the moratorium on fracking in his first PMQs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The sheer density of people relying on fossil fuels makes urban populations highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Fewer green spaces exacerbate the problem. According to the IPCC report, limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius would "require rapid and far-reaching transitions in uses of energy, land, urban and infrastructure (including transport and buildings), and industrial systems."

An added challenge is the projection, in a UN report, that another 2.5 billion people will reside in urban areas by 2050; nearly 90 per cent of them in cities in Asia and Africa. The good news is that cities around the world have already begun to take measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and are putting policies in place that encourage the use of alternative energy sources. Efforts by policy makers and administrators to address climate change, however, will need to accelerate to keep pace with population growth and the rapid climate change.

The effects of climate change are worse among poor and low-income communities, in part because many live on the margins of society, in unstable structures, and in areas more susceptible to flooding, landslides, earthquakes, but also because of inadequate capacities, inadequate resources and reduced access to emergency response systems. This is even more pronounced in developing countries.

To address the issue of climate change in cities, UN-Habitat, UNEP, the World Bank and Cities Alliance have established the Joint Work Programme to assist cities in developing countries to mainstream environmental considerations into urban policymaking.

In Jamaica, UN-Habitat's Cities and Climate Change Initiative (CCCI) helped people understand "planning as a long-term tool for climate compatible cities." The programme, through partnerships with the local administrators and activists, has fostered communication within the community so that residents become informed on climate-resilient activities.

Pollution, mostly associated as a by-product of urban landscapes, is also linked with climate change. Both climate change and air pollution are exacerbated by the burning of fossil fuels, which increase CO2 emissions, the cause of global warming.

In October 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a report that 93 per cent of the world's children breathe toxic air every day. According to the report, 1.8 billion children breathe air that is so polluted it puts their health and development at serious risk. WHO estimates that in 2016, 600,000 children died from acute lower respiratory infections caused by polluted air. The report highlights that "More than 40% of the world's population - which includes 1 billion children under 15 - is exposed to high levels of household air pollution from mainly cooking with polluting technologies and fuels." In developing countries, women frequently rely on coal and biomass fuels for cooking and heating, putting them and their and their children at higher risk to the effects of home pollutants.

WHO recommends and supports the implementation of policies to reduce air pollution, including better waste management, the use of clean technologies and fuels for household cooking, heating and lighting to improve the quality of air in homes.

The reduction of greenhouse gases and air pollution is one of the goals of the UN Environment's Share the Road Programme, which encourages walking and cycling. The agency endorsed an award-winning bike-sharing scheme in Hangzhou, China, which started out to provide public transport, but ended up alleviating traffic congestion and drastically improving air quality. "Hangzhou is a great example of how cities can introduce initiatives like bike sharing to encourage people to get out of their cars and reduce air pollution," said Rob de Jong, Head of UN Environment's Air Quality and Mobility Unit. Together with the WHO and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, UN Environment is part of the global Breathe Life campaign, helping to mobilize cities and encourage individuals to protect the planet from effects of air pollution.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
UNITED NATIONS UN Climate Change Summit 2019

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The sheer density of people relying on fossil fuels makes urban populations highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Fewer green spaces exacerbate the problem.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Nearly half of all ocean pollution comes from activities that take place on land.

Oil spills and other pollution at sea-while they carry serious consequences-actually account for a small fraction of ocean pollution.

Nearly half of all ocean pollution comes from activities that take place on land, like sewage, industrial and agricultural runoff, garbage dumping, and chemical spills. Another third comes from airborne pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and mercury from coal-burning power plants.

Pesticide and fertilizer runoff are creating huge dead zones-oxygen-depleted areas where many marine species struggle to survive. The world's largest dead zone, located in the Gulf of Mexico, is roughly the size of Connecticut.

Plastics in the Ocean

Plastics are another major source of contamination in our oceans. Of the 100 million metric tons of plastic produced every year, about 10 million end up in the oceans.

Plastic pollution comes in all shapes and sizes. Larger pieces make up the Eastern Garbage Patch, a floating whirlpool of trash in the Pacific oceans that's about the size of Texas. Smaller pieces-like the microbeads in your toothpaste and cosmetics-are choking hundreds of different marine species.

Ocean Acidification

The same greenhouse gases causing climate change are also having disastrous effects on the ocean.

Our oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide, rapidly causing them to become more acidic. This is threatening the habitat of every species that calls the ocean home, particularly vulnerable coral as well as many types of plankton, which form the base of the food chain.

© Marten van Dijl / Greenpeace

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Pollution & Climate Change - Greenpeace USA

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Nearly half of all ocean pollution comes from activities that take place on land. Oil spills and other pollution at sea-while they carry serious consequences-actually account for a small fraction of ocean pollution. Nearly half of all ocean pollution comes from activities that take place on land, like sewage, industrial and agricultural runoff, garbage dumping, and chemical spills.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Climate change can impact air quality and, conversely, air quality can impact climate change.

Climate Change Impacts on Air Quality

Changes in climate can result in impacts to local air quality. Atmospheric warming associated with climate change has the potential to increase ground-level ozone in many regions, which may present challenges for compliance with the ozone standards in the future. The impact of climate change on other air pollutants, such as particulate matter, is less certain, but research is underway to address these uncertainties.

Air Quality Impacts on Climate Change

Emissions of pollutants into the air can result in changes to the climate. These pollutants, including greenhouse gases, are often referred to as climate forcers. Ozone in the atmosphere warms the climate, while different components of PM can have either warming or cooling effects on the climate. For example, black carbon, a particulate pollutant from combustion, contributes to the warming of the Earth, while particulate sulfates cool the earth's atmosphere.

Research on climate change and air quality includes:

Point source emissions of air pollutants and climate forcers

Fugitive and area source emissions of air pollutants and climate forcers

Mobile source emissions of air pollutants and climate forcers

Developing and verifying air pollution emissions inventories, including greenhouse gas emissions.

Modeling chemical transport of air pollutants emitted into the atmosphere.

Quantifying the health and economic benefits of reducing air pollution and emissions of climate forcers.

Evaluating how different m ultipollutant/multisector control strategies can affect greenhouse gases and other air pollutant emissions.

The scientific knowledge and tools developed by EPA are enhancing the ability of state and local air quality managers to consider climate change in their decisions to protect air quality and to reduce the impacts of a changing climate.
Related Resources

Air Research

National Climate Assessment - EPA contributes to the U.S. Global Change Research Program's development of the National Climate Assessment, including chapters on the impacts of climate on air quality. The Fourth National Climate Assessment was published in November 2018 and the Fifth National Climate Assessment is under development.

Clean Cookstove Research - The majority of cookstoves used in developing countries emit black carbon, an air pollutant that contributes to warming of the atmosphere.

Related Tools

GLIMPSE Model - GLIMPSE is a decision support modeling tool being developed by EPA that will assist states with energy and environmental planning through the year 2050. Users of GLIMPSE can explore the impacts of energy technologies and policies on the environment.

Community Multi-scale Air Quality Model - CMAQ is EPA's premier modeling system for studying air pollution from local to hemispheric scales.

Publications

Science Inventory is a searchable database of journal articles, reports and presentations primarily by the EPA's Office of Research and Development.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Air Quality and Climate Change Research | US EPA

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
EPA is conducting research to understand the relationships between climate change and air quality by advancing the understanding of temperature changs on ozone and particulate matter concentrations and changes in pollen and allergic disease patterns.

# data[].attributes.headline
U.S. Environmental Protective Agency: Web Topics & Links, A-Z

# data[].attributes.subject
U.S. Environmental Protective Agency: Web Topics & Links, A-Z

# data[].attributes.body
Scroll to find the environmental topic you need information on and click reach the EPA's landing page for general info and additional links.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We've made some changes to EPA.gov. If the information you are looking for is not here, you may be able to find it on the EPA Web Archive or the January 19, 2017 Web Snapshot.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Pollution is the introduction of harmful materials into the environment. These harmful materials are called pollutants. Pollutants can be natural, such as volcanic ash. They can also be created by human activity, such as trash or runoff produced by factories. Pollutants damage the quality of air, water, and land.

Many things that are useful to people produce pollution. Cars spew pollutants from their exhaust pipes. Burning coal to create electricity pollutes the air. Industries and homes generate garbage and sewage that can pollute the land and water. Pesticides-chemical poisons used to kill weeds and insects-seep into waterways and harm wildlife.

All living things-from one-celled microbes to blue whales-depend on Earth's supply of air and water. When these resources are polluted, all forms of life are threatened.

Pollution is a global problem. Although urban areas are usually more polluted than the countryside, pollution can spread to remote places where no people live. For example, pesticides and other chemicals have been found in the Antarctic ice sheet. In the middle of the northern Pacific Ocean, a huge collection of microscopic plastic particles forms what is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Air and water currents carry pollution. Ocean currents and migrating fish carry marine pollutants far and wide. Winds can pick up radioactive material accidentally released from a nuclear reactor and scatter it around the world. Smoke from a factory in one country drifts into another country.

In the past, visitors to Big Bend National Park in the U.S. state of Texas could see 290 kilometers (180 miles) across the vast landscape. Now, coal-burning power plants in Texas and the neighboring state of Chihuahua, Mexico have spewed so much pollution into the air that visitors to Big Bend can sometimes see only 50 kilometers (30 miles).

The three major types of pollution are air pollution, water pollution, and land pollution.

Air Pollution
Sometimes, air pollution is visible. A person can see dark smoke pour from the exhaust pipes of large trucks or factories, for example. More often, however, air pollution is invisible.

Polluted air can be dangerous, even if the pollutants are invisible. It can make people's eyes burn and make them have difficulty breathing. It can also increase the risk of lung cancer.

Sometimes, air pollution kills quickly. In 1984, an accident at a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, released a deadly gas into the air. At least 8,000 people died within days. Hundreds of thousands more were permanently injured.

Natural disasters can also cause air pollution to increase quickly. When volcanoes erupt, they eject volcanic ash and gases into the atmosphere. Volcanic ash can discolor the sky for months. After the eruption of the Indonesian volcano of Krakatoa in 1883, ash darkened the sky around the world. The dimmer sky caused fewer crops to be harvested as far away as Europe and North America. For years, meteorologists tracked what was known as the "equatorial smoke stream." In fact, this smoke stream was a jet stream, a wind high in Earth's atmosphere that Krakatoa's air pollution made visible.

Volcanic gases, such as sulfur dioxide, can kill nearby residents and make the soil infertile for years. Mount Vesuvius, a volcano in Italy, famously erupted in 79, killing hundreds of residents of the nearby towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Most victims of Vesuvius were not killed by lava or landslides caused by the eruption. They were choked, or asphyxiated, by deadly volcanic gases.

In 1986, a toxic cloud developed over Lake Nyos, Cameroon. Lake Nyos sits in the crater of a volcano. Though the volcano did not erupt, it did eject volcanic gases into the lake. The heated gases passed through the water of the lake and collected as a cloud that descended the slopes of the volcano and into nearby valleys. As the toxic cloud moved across the landscape, it killed birds and other organisms in their natural habitat. This air pollution also killed thousands of cattle and as many as 1,700 people.

Most air pollution is not natural, however. It comes from burning fossil fuels-coal, oil, and natural gas. When gasoline is burned to power cars and trucks, it produces carbon monoxide, a colorless, odorless gas. The gas is harmful in high concentrations, or amounts. City traffic produces highly concentrated carbon monoxide.

Cars and factories produce other common pollutants, including nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, and hydrocarbons. These chemicals react with sunlight to produce smog, a thick fog or haze of air pollution. The smog is so thick in Linfen, China, that people can seldom see the sun. Smog can be brown or grayish blue, depending on which pollutants are in it.

Smog makes breathing difficult, especially for children and older adults. Some cities that suffer from extreme smog issue air pollution warnings. The government of Hong Kong, for example, will warn people not to go outside or engage in strenuous physical activity (such as running or swimming) when smog is very thick.

When air pollutants such as nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide mix with moisture, they change into acids. They then fall back to earth as acid rain. Wind often carries acid rain far from the pollution source. Pollutants produced by factories and power plants in Spain can fall as acid rain in Norway.

Acid rain can kill all the trees in a forest. It can also devastate lakes, streams, and other waterways. When lakes become acidic, fish can't survive. In Sweden, acid rain created thousands of "dead lakes," where fish no longer live.

Acid rain also wears away marble and other kinds of stone. It has erased the words on gravestones and damaged many historic buildings and monuments. The Taj Mahal, in Agra, India, was once gleaming white. Years of exposure to acid rain has left it pale.

Governments have tried to prevent acid rain by limiting the amount of pollutants released into the air. In Europe and North America, they have had some success, but acid rain remains a major problem in the developing world, especially Asia.

Greenhouse gases are another source of air pollution. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane occur naturally in the atmosphere. In fact, they are necessary for life on Earth. They absorb sunlight reflected from Earth, preventing it from escaping into space. By trapping heat in the atmosphere, they keep Earth warm enough for people to live. This is called the greenhouse effect.

But human activities such as burning fossil fuels and destroying forests have increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This has increased the greenhouse effect, and average temperatures across the globe are rising. The decade that began in the year 2000 was the warmest on record. This increase in worldwide average temperatures, caused in part by human activity, is called global warming.

Global warming is causing ice sheets and glaciers to melt. The melting ice is causing sea levels to rise at a rate of two millimeters (0.09 inches) per year. The rising seas will eventually flood low-lying coastal regions. Entire nations, such as the islands of Maldives, are threatened by this climate change.

Global warming also contributes to the phenomenon of ocean acidification. Ocean acidification is the process of ocean waters absorbing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Fewer organisms can survive in warmer, less salty waters. The ocean food web is threatened as plants and animals such as coral fail to adapt to more acidic oceans.

Scientists have predicted that global warming will cause an increase in severe storms. It will also cause more droughts in some regions and more flooding in others.

The change in average temperatures is already shrinking some habitats, the regions where plants and animals naturally live. Polar bears hunt seals from sea ice in the Arctic. The melting ice is forcing polar bears to travel farther to find food, and their numbers are shrinking.

People and governments can respond quickly and effectively to reduce air pollution. Chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are a dangerous form of air pollution that governments worked to reduce in the 1980s and 1990s. CFCs are found in gases that cool refrigerators, in foam products, and in aerosol cans.

CFCs damage the ozone layer, a region in Earth's upper atmosphere. The ozone layer protects Earth by absorbing much of the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation. When people are exposed to more ultraviolet radiation, they are more likely to develop skin cancer, eye diseases, and other illnesses.

In the 1980s, scientists noticed that the ozone layer over Antarctica was thinning. This is often called the "ozone hole." No one lives permanently in Antarctica. But Australia, the home of more than 22 million people, lies at the edge of the hole. In the 1990s, the Australian government began an effort to warn people of the dangers of too much sun. Many countries, including the United States, now severely limit the production of CFCs.

Water Pollution
Some polluted water looks muddy, smells bad, and has garbage floating in it. Some polluted water looks clean, but is filled with harmful chemicals you can't see or smell.

Polluted water is unsafe for drinking and swimming. Some people who drink polluted water are exposed to hazardous chemicals that may make them sick years later. Others consume bacteria and other tiny aquatic organisms that cause disease. The United Nations estimates that 4,000 children die every day from drinking dirty water.

Sometimes, polluted water harms people indirectly. They get sick because the fish that live in polluted water are unsafe to eat. They have too many pollutants in their flesh.

There are some natural sources of water pollution. Oil and natural gas, for example, can leak into oceans and lakes from natural underground sources. These sites are called petroleum seeps. The world's largest petroleum seep is the Coal Oil Point Seep, off the coast of the U.S. state of California. The Coal Oil Point Seep releases so much oil that tar balls wash up on nearby beaches. Tar balls are small, sticky pieces of pollution that eventually decompose in the ocean.

Human activity also contributes to water pollution. Chemicals and oils from factories are sometimes dumped or seep into waterways. These chemicals are called runoff. Chemicals in runoff can create a toxic environment for aquatic life. Runoff can also help create a fertile environment for cyanobacteria, also called blue-green algae. Cyanobacteria reproduce rapidly, creating a harmful algal bloom (HAB). Harmful algal blooms prevent organisms such as plants and fish from living in the ocean. They are associated with "dead zones" in the world's lakes and rivers, places where little life exists below surface water.

Mining and drilling can also contribute to water pollution. Acid mine drainage (AMD) is a major contributor to pollution of rivers and streams near coal mines. Acid helps miners remove coal from the surrounding rocks. The acid is washed into streams and rivers, where it reacts with rocks and sand. It releases chemical sulfur from the rocks and sand, creating a river rich in sulfuric acid. Sulfuric acid is toxic to plants, fish, and other aquatic organisms. Sulfuric acid is also toxic to people, making rivers polluted by AMD dangerous sources of water for drinking and hygiene.

Oil spills are another source of water pollution. In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing oil to gush from the ocean floor. In the following months, hundreds of millions of gallons of oil spewed into the gulf waters. The spill produced large plumes of oil under the sea and an oil slick on the surface as large as 24,000 square kilometers (9,100 square miles). The oil slick coated wetlands in the U.S. states of Louisiana and Mississippi, killing marsh plants and aquatic organisms such as crabs and fish. Birds, such as pelicans, became coated in oil and were unable to fly or access food. More than two million animals died as a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Buried chemical waste can also pollute water supplies. For many years, people disposed of chemical wastes carelessly, not realizing its dangers. In the 1970s, people living in the Love Canal area in Niagara Falls, New York, suffered from extremely high rates of cancer and birth defects. It was discovered that a chemical waste dump had poisoned the area's water. In 1978, 800 families living in Love Canal had to abandon their homes.

If not disposed of properly, radioactive waste from nuclear power plants can escape into the environment. Radioactive waste can harm living things and pollute the water.

Sewage that has not been properly treated is a common source of water pollution. Many cities around the world have poor sewage systems and sewage treatment plants. Delhi, the capital of India, is home to more than 21 million people. More than half the sewage and other waste produced in the city are dumped into the Yamuna River. This pollution makes the river dangerous to use as a source of water for drinking or hygiene. It also reduces the river's fishery, resulting in less food for the local community.

A major source of water pollution is fertilizer used in agriculture. Fertilizer is material added to soil to make plants grow larger and faster. Fertilizers usually contain large amounts of the elements nitrogen and phosphorus, which help plants grow. Rainwater washes fertilizer into streams and lakes. There, the nitrogen and phosphorus cause cyanobacteria to form harmful algal blooms.

Rain washes other pollutants into streams and lakes. It picks up animal waste from cattle ranches. Cars drip oil onto the street, and rain carries it into storm drains, which lead to waterways such as rivers and seas. Rain sometimes washes chemical pesticides off of plants and into streams. Pesticides can also seep into groundwater, the water beneath the surface of the Earth.

Heat can pollute water. Power plants, for example, produce a huge amount of heat. Power plants are often located on rivers so they can use the water as a coolant. Cool water circulates through the plant, absorbing heat. The heated water is then returned to the river. Aquatic creatures are sensitive to changes in temperature. Some fish, for example, can only live in cold water. Warmer river temperatures prevent fish eggs from hatching. Warmer river water also contributes to harmful algal blooms.

Another type of water pollution is simple garbage. The Citarum River in Indonesia, for example, has so much garbage floating in it that you cannot see the water. Floating trash makes the river difficult to fish in. Aquatic animals such as fish and turtles mistake trash, such as plastic bags, for food. Plastic bags and twine can kill many ocean creatures. Chemical pollutants in trash can also pollute the water, making it toxic for fish and people who use the river as a source of drinking water. The fish that are caught in a polluted river often have high levels of chemical toxins in their flesh. People absorb these toxins as they eat the fish.

Garbage also fouls the ocean. Many plastic bottles and other pieces of trash are thrown overboard from boats. The wind blows trash out to sea. Ocean currents carry plastics and other floating trash to certain places on the globe, where it cannot escape. The largest of these areas, called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. According to some estimates, this garbage patch is the size of Texas. The trash is a threat to fish and seabirds, which mistake the plastic for food. Many of the plastics are covered with chemical pollutants.

Land Pollution
Many of the same pollutants that foul the water also harm the land. Mining sometimes leaves the soil contaminated with dangerous chemicals.

Pesticides and fertilizers from agricultural fields are blown by the wind. They can harm plants, animals, and sometimes people. Some fruits and vegetables absorb the pesticides that help them grow. When people consume the fruits and vegetables, the pesticides enter their bodies. Some pesticides can cause cancer and other diseases.

A pesticide called DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) was once commonly used to kill insects, especially mosquitoes. In many parts of the world, mosquitoes carry a disease called malaria, which kills a million people every year. Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Muller was awarded the Nobel Prize for his understanding of how DDT can control insects and other pests. DDT is responsible for reducing malaria in places such as Taiwan and Sri Lanka.

In 1962, American biologist Rachel Carson wrote a book called combat malaria.

Trash is another form of land pollution. Around the world, paper, cans, glass jars, plastic products, and junked cars and appliances mar the landscape. Litter makes it difficult for plants and other producers in the food web to create nutrients. Animals can die if they mistakenly eat plastic.

Garbage often contains dangerous pollutants such as oils, chemicals, and ink. These pollutants can leech into the soil and harm plants, animals, and people.

Inefficient garbage collection systems contribute to land pollution. Often, the garbage is picked up and brought to a dump, or landfill. Garbage is buried in landfills. Sometimes, communities produce so much garbage that their landfills are filling up. They are running out of places to dump their trash.

A massive landfill near Quezon City, Philippines, was the site of a land pollution tragedy in 2000. Hundreds of people lived on the slopes of the Quezon City landfill. These people made their living from recycling and selling items found in the landfill. However, the landfill was not secure. Heavy rains caused a trash landslide, killing 218 people.

Sometimes, landfills are not completely sealed off from the land around them. Pollutants from the landfill leak into the earth in which they are buried. Plants that grow in the earth may be contaminated, and the herbivores that eat the plants also become contaminated. So do the predators that consume the herbivores. This process, where a chemical builds up in each level of the food web, is called bioaccumulation.

Pollutants leaked from landfills also leak into local groundwater supplies. There, the aquatic food web (from microscopic algae to fish to predators such as sharks or eagles) can suffer from bioaccumulation of toxic chemicals.

Some communities do not have adequate garbage collection systems, and trash lines the side of roads. In other places, garbage washes up on beaches. Kamilo Beach, in the U.S. state of Hawai'i, is littered with plastic bags and bottles carried in by the tide. The trash is dangerous to ocean life and reduces economic activity in the area. Tourism is Hawai'i's largest industry. Polluted beaches discourage tourists from investing in the area's hotels, restaurants, and recreational activities.

Some cities incinerate, or burn, their garbage. Incinerating trash gets rid of it, but it can release dangerous heavy metals and chemicals into the air. So while trash incinerators can help with the problem of land pollution, they sometimes add to the problem of air pollution.

Reducing Pollution
Around the world, people and governments are making efforts to combat pollution. Recycling, for instance, is becoming more common. In recycling, trash is processed so its useful materials can be used again. Glass, Silent Spring, which discussed the dangers of DDT. She argued that it could contribute to cancer in humans. She also explained how it was destroying bird eggs, which caused the number of bald eagles, brown pelicans, and ospreys to drop. In 1972, the United States banned the use of DDT. Many other countries also banned it. But DDT didn't disappear entirely. Today, many governments support the use of DDT because it remains the most effective way to aluminum cans, and many types of plastic can be melted and reused. Paper can be broken down and turned into new paper.

Recycling reduces the amount of garbage that ends up in landfills, incinerators, and waterways. Austria and Switzerland have the highest recycling rates. These nations recycle between 50 and 60 percent of their garbage. The United States recycles about 30 percent of its garbage.

Governments can combat pollution by passing laws that limit the amount and types of chemicals factories and agribusinesses are allowed to use. The smoke from coal-burning power plants can be filtered. People and businesses that illegally dump pollutants into the land, water, and air can be fined for millions of dollars. Some government programs, such as the Superfund program in the United States, can force polluters to clean up the sites they polluted.

International agreements can also reduce pollution. The Kyoto Protocol, a United Nations agreement to limit the emission of greenhouse gases, has been signed by 191 countries. The United States, the world's second-largest producer of greenhouse gases, did not sign the agreement. Other countries, such as China, the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases, have not met their goals.

Still, many gains have been made. In 1969, the Cuyahoga River, in the U.S. state of Ohio, was so clogged with oil and trash that it caught on fire. The fire helped spur the Clean Water Act of 1972. This law limited what pollutants could be released into water and set standards for how clean water should be. Today, the Cuyahoga River is much cleaner. Fish have returned to regions of the river where they once could not survive.

But even as some rivers are becoming cleaner, others are becoming more polluted. As countries around the world become wealthier, some forms of pollution increase. Countries with growing economies usually need more power plants, which produce more pollutants.

Reducing pollution requires environmental, political, and economic leadership. Developed nations must work to reduce and recycle their materials, while developing nations must work to strengthen their economies without destroying the environment. Developed and developing countries must work together toward the common goal of protecting the environment for future use.

Fast Fact

How Long Does It Last?
Different materials decompose at different rates. How long does it take for these common types of trash to break down?

Fast Fact

Indoor Air Pollution
The air inside your house can be polluted. Air and carpet cleaners, insect sprays, and cigarettes are all sources of indoor air pollution.

Fast Fact

Light Pollution
Light pollution is the excess amount of light in the night sky. Light pollution, also called photopollution, is almost always found in urban areas. Light pollution can disrupt ecosystems by confusing the distinction between night and day. Nocturnal animals, those that are active at night, may venture out during the day, while diurnal animals, which are active during daylight hours, may remain active well into the night. Feeding and sleep patterns may be confused. Light pollution also indicates an excess use of energy.

The dark-sky movement is a campaign by people to reduce light pollution. This would reduce energy use, allow ecosystems to function more normally, and allow scientists and stargazers to observe the atmosphere.

Fast Fact

Noise Pollution
Noise pollution is the constant presence of loud, disruptive noises in an area. Usually, noise pollution is caused by construction or nearby transportation facilities, such as airports.

Noise pollution is unpleasant, and can be dangerous. Some songbirds, such as robins, are unable to communicate or find food in the presence of heavy noise pollution. The sound waves produced by some noise pollutants can disrupt the sonar used by marine animals to communicate or locate food.

Media Credits

The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited.

Illustrators

Mary Crooks, National Geographic Society

Editors

Jeannie Evers, Emdash Editing, Emdash Editing

Producer

National Geographic Society

other

Last Updated

October 19, 2023

For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. They will best know the preferred format. When you reach out to them, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource.

Media

If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media.

Text

Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service.

Interactives

Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Pollution is the introduction of harmful materials into the environment. These harmful materials are called pollutants.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Switching to low carbon fuels for transportation, cooking, heating, power generation and other needs would help fight climate change and also reduce racial and ethnic disparities in exposure to air ...

New research suggests nitrogen released by gas-powered machines causes dry soil to let go of carbon and release it back into the atmosphere, where it can contribute to climate ...

Researchers investigated disparities in exposure to six major air pollutants in 1990, 2000 and 2010 by comparing models of air pollution levels to census data. While overall pollutant concentrations ...

Researchers have demonstrated a proof-of-concept for a novel molecular hydrogen production method that bypasses the need for expensive purification steps. They developed a system where hydrogen is ...

A study of 29 European lakes has found that some naturally-occurring lake bacteria grow faster and more efficiently on the remains of plastic bags than on natural matter like leaves and twigs. The ...

While the Clean Water Act successfully regulated many obvious causes of pollution, such as the dumping of wastewater, it's done less to limit more diffuse types of pollution, such as ...

New research examines commuter characteristics to better understand how factors such as departure time, frequency, and commute length are associated with exposure to air pollution. Using personal air ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
lung disease; diseases and conditions; endangered plants; nature; pollution; air quality; environmental policies; energy issues

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Switching to low carbon fuels for transportation, cooking, heating, power generation and other needs would help fight climate change and also reduce racial and ethnic disparities in exposure to air ... New research suggests nitrogen released by gas-powered machines causes dry soil to let go of carbon and release it back into the atmosphere, where it can contribute to climate ...

# data[].attributes.body
A Staten Island-based conservation organization.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Please note that due to the current coronavirus situation, please contact Jim Scarcella at [email protected] to see if event has been cancelled.
Meeting Schedule for 2020
Meeting location at the Regina M. McGinn, MD Medical Education Center at Staten Island University Hospital 2nd floor, 475 Seaview Ave, Staten Island, NY 10305. Please use the entrance with the awning between the main entrance and the Emergency Room.

Tuesday, January 7, 2020
Tuesday, February 4, 2020
Tuesday, March 3, 2020
Tuesday, April 7, 2020
Tuesday, May 5, 2020
Tuesday, June 2, 2020
July no meeting
Tuesday, August 4, 2020
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Tuesday, October 6, 2020
November no meeting
Tuesday, December 1, 2020

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Please note that due to the current coronavirus situation, please contact Jim Scarcella at [email protected] to see if event has been cancelled. Meeting Schedule for 2020 Meeting location at the Regina M. McGinn, MD Medical Education Center at Staten Island University Hospital 2nd floor, 475 Seaview Ave, Staten Island, NY 10305.

# data[].attributes.headline
"WHO’S IN DANGER?Race, Poverty, and Chemical Disasters: A demographic analysis of chemical disaster vulnerability zones"

# data[].attributes.subject
"WHO’S IN DANGER?Race, Poverty, and Chemical Disasters: A demographic analysis of chemical disaster vulnerability zones"

# data[].attributes.body
2014 data but a strong starting point for guiding more recent research

# data[].attributes.headline
"LET'S BROADEN OUR DEFINITION OF GREEN JOBS: One Way to Build a Bigger Movement"

# data[].attributes.subject
"LET'S BROADEN OUR DEFINITION OF GREEN JOBS: One Way to Build a Bigger Movement"

# data[].attributes.body
This is an older article but probably a great starting point to discovering more recent research on access and availability of "green jobs."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
About the Author

Tara Arthur is an International Development professional who is passionate about youth and nature. She has been part of the C&NN Natural Leaders core team since its founding in 2008. She is also co-founder of Millennial Youth-Led Expeditions, promoting youth-led cooperative recreation, stewardship, education and research.

I have often hesitated to write something like this for fear that my credentials weren't that of a traditional environmentalist, but I do want to speak to you about what I hope will be a growing trend.

As we look at the challenges facing our world, from poverty to climate change, it's clear that these problems are interconnected. The good news is that our society is striving to be more aware of our natural surroundings, and how we're all connected through nature.

Now it's time to incorporate the concept of cross pollination into our everyday lives, including our current jobs and future careers.

Some people may think that getting kids outside and fighting pollution are separate pursuits. But can I really be someone so deeply passionate about reconnecting children and nature without also addressing global development challenges?

Some might think that a person needs to choose, that you can't be a leader in both the children and nature movement and in environmentalism, that those two worlds are somehow separate. I disagree.

Having champions that work across multiple sectors is a very good thing.

I'll focus here on one aspect of cross-pollination: the way we define green jobs and green job professionals.

To some, a green job seeker might be someone with a degree in biology, a love of hiking, and a focus on energy efficiency - installing solar panels, for example. But what about the person who has a degree in finance, enjoys camping, who mentors a group of young people outdoors, who introduces children to nature? These are all green jobs.

When describing green jobs and green job professionals, we occasionally neglect the fact that green jobs exist in many forms, potentially in every discipline, field and sector.

Green professionals and green jobs come in different forms. Some of us wear suits, others boots, but what unites us is our love for the natural world and our interest in incorporating it into our lives and the lives of others.We can't say that nature is for everyone if we don't allow ourselves to appreciate it in our own unique ways.

So when you see that budget analyst working weekends to help their local nature club get its finances in order, or the athletic coach who uses their outdoor leadership experience to motivate a team and inspire others, ask yourself: Aren't these green job professionals, too? Let's celebrate the fact that these people have managed to merge their jobs and their passion.

While we're at it, let's find more ways people can integrate the natural world into their daily lives. All children need and deserve access to nature, but not all children will have the faculty or interest to turn it into a traditional green career. If we can show young (and old) people that there are many ways to learn outside and that learning can lead to a multitude of career paths, then we're a larger movement. The first step to that is to broaden our minds about how we define green jobs.

Additional Reading and Resources
The Natural Leaders Network The Nature-Rich Career: How a Child's Outdoor Experiences Helped Shape a Young Woman's Future New Nature-Smart Careers: 11 for a Nature-Rich Future and Right Now It's Time to Redefine Green Jobs: Thoughts Following the First-Ever White House Summit on Environmental Education C&NN's Natural Leaders Partner with U.S. Fish & Wildlife

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
LET'S BROADEN OUR DEFINITION OF GREEN JOBS: One Way to Build a Bigger Movement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I have often hesitated to write something like this for fear that my credentials weren't that of a traditional environmentalist, but I do want to speak to you about what I hope will be a growing trend.

# data[].attributes.headline
Article about expanding access to green spaces for urban youth and youth of color

# data[].attributes.subject
Article about expanding access to green spaces for urban youth and youth of color

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
About the Author

CJ Goulding is Lead Organizer of C&NNs Natural Leaders Network and Legacy Camps. CJ has worked with Washington's North Cascades Institute introducing teens to backpacking and canoe camping trips, and has also served with the Student Conservation Association as a Community Crew Leader working with high school students in the city parks and green spaces of Seattle and Edmonds. CJ has also worked with the Youth Programs office of the National Park Service in Washington DC.

I am an African American Natural Leader. That phrase is not an oxymoron, but it's also not something that you normally see in the environmental world.

In the few years that I have been involved in environmental education and connecting people with outdoor spaces, there have been numerous occasions where I am the only person of color in the prog ram, or the only African American leader. Growing up, there was no one from my neighborhood traveling, hiking, canoeing, or spending time outdoors unless it was a part of a regimented program.

But do not misunderstand the meaning behind that statement, do not miss my point.

I write, neither to complain that the outdoor world is an elitist one, nor to lament the disconnect between the world I grew up in and the natural world where I now lay roots. I write to celebrate the amazing opportunity available for me (and others like myself) to be a bridge between the two worlds.

On my feet as I write are Jordan Bred 11's, the only pair of Michael Jordan's sneakers I have ever owned in my life. Jordan sneakers are a status symbol in the neighborhood I grew up in, a memento of importance and significance. Unfortunately, for some people, they hold higher value than food, books, rent, and in some extreme cases, even the life and well-being of another individual.

So it makes sense that while facilitating an outdoor youth summit this June at Harpers Ferry National Park (Virginia), an African-American teenage boy stopped me to ask why I was wearing these Bred 11s outdoors. I laughed, because that same question and all the underlying ones that accompanied it had been asked of me multiple times that week, and my introspective journey in figuring out that answer led me to write this post.

In response, I asked him if he had ever seen someone from the "outdoor world" wearing Jordans. His answer was no. I asked him if he had seen anyone who would wear Jordans exploring the outdoors like we were, and again he said no.

The disconnect between the two circles was evident, and as we looked around, we could see that even there, we were in the minority.

And with that same mindset, I used to believe that I stood on a decrepit bridge between two worlds...

I have heard the rallying cry echo through the trees, affirming that the outdoors are for people of all creeds, countries and colors. I have been a part of programs that aim to introduce these natural spaces to kids from the inner city who don't have the awareness, opportunity or means to go camping or hiking every weekend.

I have heard the questions posed every time I prepare to travel to a wild place away from home, and seen the confusion that arises when my family attempts to describe what I do.

But two summers ago, in the infancy of my outdoor career, while serving as a trip leader for the North Cascades Institute, the seed of connection between two seemingly mutually exclusive circles was planted. I was the only male African American leader, and quickly learned the importance of setting an example. During that time, I had many conversations with the teenagers on my trips about where I came from, what I was doing living out in nature, and why I chose to do it.

That summer, as I learned the nuances of nature and the outdoors right alongside my kids, nature taught us both struggles and pain, knots and the power of perseverance. And although I took notice of the difference between where I was at that moment and where I grew up, without any intentional nurturing from me, the seed of connection between the two worlds took root and grew.

Eventually it came to my conscious attention through one of the teenagers on my trip, who on our last day, as we were preparing to separate, said "he enjoyed being outdoors in the nature because CJ did." And I realized the tremendous impact that I could have.

I no longer saw the singularity of my skin tone among my peers as a problem, but instead as a megaphone to give weight to the message that as people of color, people from different ethnic backgrounds, the outdoor world is ours to explore as well. And for those who have grown up connected to and educated in the outdoors, they now have the chance to connect to new cultures, to see flora and fauna through the eyes of city kids.

Along this journey, I have met several other natural leaders of different ethnicities doing similar and amazing work, both in the inner city and out in parks and natural spaces around the country. I had the opportunity to attend the 2013 Natural Leaders Legacy Camp, where I connected with fifty other leaders with similar mindsets, strengthening my resolve, knowing I am not the only one out there.

My Jordans are falling apart, worn from adventures in places like the Grand Tetons and the Grand Canyon. This goes directly against how people "should" wear them and what people "should" wear outdoors. But I wear them wherever I go to remind me of the fact that though there are two worlds, I am a bridge.

In our current society, where youth as a whole do not spend significant time outdoors, I am encouraged by that realization as I have continued to work in outdoor and conservation related fields, and I am constantly reassured of its validity when I see yet another kid from the inner city follow the footprints of my Bred 11s into the woods.

More Reading and Resources
C&NN'S Natural Leaders Network LET'S BROADEN OUR DEFINITION OF GREEN JOBS: One Way to Build a Bigger Movement TEN GREEN JOB RESOURCES I Wish I Had Known About Ten Years Ago YOUNG LEADERS RISING

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
WHY I WEAR JORDANS IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS: A Natural Leader Builds Bridges Between Worlds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
CJ Goulding is Lead Organizer of C&NNs Natural Leaders Network and Legacy Camps. CJ has worked with Washington's North Cascades Institute introducing teens to backpacking and canoe camping trips, and has also served with the Student Conservation Association as a Community Crew Leader working with high school students in the city parks and green spaces of Seattle and Edmonds.