Environmental issues

The explosive growth of human population, coupled with rapid industrial development over the last ten decades, has caused a rampant loss of natural resources and disturbed the delicate balance between the living and non-living components of the biosphere. The manufacture and use of synthetic materials, together with large-scale construction activity, has released numerous undesirable substances into the environment, resulting in severe pollution of several kinds -- air, water, soil, noise and radioactive pollution among them. …