Air and Water Quality

The pollution of the world's oceans and atmosphere has long been a matter of concern to environmental scientists. The great circulation systems of ocean and air are the controlling factors of the earth's natural environment, and modifications to those systems have unknown consequences. This map is based on what we can measure: (1) areas of oceans where oil pollution has been proven to have inflicted significant damage to ocean ecosystems and lifeforms (including phytoplankton--the oceans' primary food producers, the equivalent of land vegetation); (2) areas of oceans where unusually high concentrations of hydrocarbons from oil spills may have inflicted some damage to the oceans' biota; (3) land areas where the combination of sulphur and nitrogen oxides have produced significant damage to terrestrial vegetation systems; (4) land areas where the emissions from industrial, transportation, commercial, residential, and other uses of fossil fuels have produced concentrations of atmospheric pollutants high enough to be damaging to human health; and (5) land areas of secondary air pollution where the primary pollutant is smoke from forest clearance. A glance at the map shows that there are few areas of the world where some form of oceanic or atmospheric pollution is not a part of our environmental system. Scientists are still debating the long-range implications of this pollution, but nearly all agree that the consequences, whatever they may be, will not be good.