Environmental Science

Unit 3 Overview

We learned a lot about Human Population,Urbanization and Environmental Hazards and its impact on human health. I learned that the 3 major factors to our population growth is the emergence of early and modern agriculture which increased our food production. Second is the expansion of humans across the planet and finally the decrease of the death rates with improvements to sanitation. We learned about the trends relating to the increase of population in urban areas. That urban areas will continue to grow and that urban areas are increasing in size and scope. Poverty is increasing in urbanized areas because of the growth of its population especially in less developed countries.
Another fascinating topic was the increase of antibiotic resistant bacteria and there will come a time that our antibiotic will not work. The number one contributor to our problem is the increased use of antibiotics in our livestock, “80% of all antibiotics used in the US and 50% of those used worldwide are added to the feed of healthy livestock.” and with 80% of our livestock being dosed with antibiotics “22% of antibiotic-resistant illness in humans is linked to food, especially meat from livestock treated with antibiotics.” and this trend is only increasing.
The most dangerous thing that many people do each day is to drive or ride in a car yet many people are not afraid of it, there are five factors that cause people to be less risky. Number 1 is fear, 2 is control of individuals over a given situation, 3 people have fear of things that they cannot control, 4 is optimism bias which is people applying risk to others but not themselves and finally risky things are highly pleasurable and give people instant gratification. Example a lot of people are afraid of flying even though it is safer than driving a car.