Petroleum and Pollution

Petroleum is a natural resource that can be found in a lot of places of our planet.

It’s a flammable liquid consisting of a mixture of hydrocarbons and other organic things.

The impact that the petroleum pollution has on the earth has always been a big problem for all the humanity and also the animals (especially fliers). A big environment damage can be the enormous loss of petroleum : they are so big tha it is not so easy to gauge quantity of petroleum lost in the sea( about four millions of tons). The petroleum can reach the sea through different ways (as we can see from the graphic):

12% is caused by incidents of ships ,  33% by diferent operations (loading, unloading),

37% of the pollution come from the cities’s and industry’s outfalls, 9% by evaporated hydrocarbons .

The petroleum is composed by some kinds of hydrocarbons :  we can find types of hydrocarbons called IPA. The IPA are toxic and dangerous for all the animals and plants. The fliers are the most common victims of ecological disasters caused by petroleum. One of the most effects caused by  the contact between  fliers and petroleum is the temperature drop in their body because the plumes are not waterproof and the plumage loses its propriety. The birds sometimes try to clean themselves but, doing that , they ingest petroleum that damages internal organs.

So we can understand that the pollution caused by petroleum is a real problem that has to be solved with some other problems like emissions of carbon dioxide,  temperature rise, and so on. Nowdays the politicians of a lot of nations are far from finding an agreement about this matter. Our opinion(and maybe it’s true) is that the first thing to do to preserve our planet is to abolish the petroleum and choose another power source that can respect the environment.

Source :
www.fondazionemichelagnoli.it/.../inquinamento_da_petrolio.htm

Workgroup: Giurseppe Albano, Pierantonio Lo Greco, Sara Palazzo, Ivan Rudenko.