Pollution and Environmental
Degradation in Egypt
Egypt is an amazing country with a
lot of beautiful sites and prestigious monuments, which shows the depth of it’s
culture and history, however there is one matter which affects all of the
above, and it’s pollution. Egypt is a highly populated country and there a lot
of illiterate, ignorant and lazy people, which don’t really care whether
pollution would affect their environment and their community. It’s become
something normal to throw in the streets or in the river nile, some people
don’t really understand how much they are damaging their country, also some
people don’t have the patience to wait and throw their rubbish in it’s
designated area. There are many types of pollution, there is air pollution,
noise pollution, land pollution, water pollution and more, all of these types
would aid in destroying any country and spreading diseases either in the air or
in the water. Pollution could also cause environmental degradation, which means
and undesirable change in the environment, this could lead to damaging soil,
the depletion of water and air, also it could lead lead to destruction of
wildlife and ecosystems. I chose this topic as pollution has always been a huge
thing in Egypt, and I can’t see any change, and I can see an increase in
pollution and it’s causing a lot of problems, it’s spreading diseases and it’s
destroying beautiful places, and it’s damaging Egypt’s water source. I also
want to send a message to the ignorant people who are the cause of this whether
they are individuals, organisations or the government.
After many discussions and research
within this topic I have found and understood how dangerous this matter is to
the country and the individuals living in it. One of the main types of
pollution in Egypt is air pollution, and it’s caused because the huge numbers
of cars in Egypt and because of the traffic in big cities like cairo, another
cause is from the air-waste from factories and from the industrial sector. In
an article by Dr Hassanein, he explained that the air quality in Egypt is more than
10-100 times of the acceptable world standards. This could cause many diseases
like cancer, as the air pollutants in Egypt of a high percentage are
hydrocarbons and lead, and they are considered as carcinogens. Water pollution
has also been a huge problem for many decades in Egypt. People just throw their
rubbish in the river, which leads to the water becoming contaminated and some
people can’t even drink clean water. Also there are many leakage problems all
around Egypt, in which sewage would infiltrate and contaminate the water. In a
study assessing the rising groundwater levels in Aswan, one of the causes of
the groundwater rising was the leakage from sewers. This leakage could come
from sewage networks, which would lead to the increase in microorganism and
algae in the water and “they are causing bad environmental impact on building
and human health. In addition of directly environmental effect on building and
human health of pollutants water of microorganism, the probability of
pollutants water to seeps to the drinking fresh water pipes network increase”
(Selim, Hamdan and Abdel Rady).
When I talked with my peers I was
able to get an idea of whether they have pollution or not and the extent of the
pollution they would have. After listening to them i understood that almost
every country would have some type of pollution, however they would react to it
differently, some government take it seriously and are working very hard in
solving this problem they are cleaning many areas, they are recycling their leftovers,
and there are very strict laws when it comes to pollution. In Egypt there are
also very good environmental laws, however the problems is with monitoring
these laws ( Dr Hassanein).
I have
given some examples of how pollution is negatively impacting Egypt, this
doesn’t mean that aren’t ways in which we could prevent them or improve the
current situation. One recommendation is that individuals take care of their
vehicles, they they would regularly check and maintain their cars/vehicles, as
if they are not working properly their exhausts would release poisonous and
toxic gases into the atmosphere, which would spread diseases and negatively
impact the air quality. Also there should be very strong penalties and
regulation towards the industrial sectors, as their wastes, whether in the air,
land or water are very dangerous, as there are a lot of dangerous compounds
which could be fatal, so I believe that the government should intervene and
stop theses wastes from leaving factories. The government has the largest role
in trying to reduce and stop pollution, they should make the people aware of
the danger of their actions, there many ways like direct marketing, which is a
very effective way. They should also improve their monitoring section, so that
people who brake the environmental laws should be legally dealt with, they
would either pay a penalty, do community service, or even serve time in prison
so that they would really learn of they are dragging their country backwards.
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