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Quote by Barry Commoner

“Air pollution is not merely a nuisance and a threat to health. It is a reminder that our most celebrated technological achievements-the automobile, the jet plane, the power plant, industry in general, and indeed the modern city itself-are, in the environment, failures.”

Quote by Barry Commoner

Author

Barry Commoner was an esteemed biologist, born on May 28, 1917, and passed away on September 30, 2012. He made significant contributions to environmental science, particularly in the fields of soil pollution and environmental protection. more

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“Along with the possibility of extinction of mankind by nuclear war, the central problem of our age has therefore become the contamination of man's total environment with such substances of incredible potential for harm-substances that accumulate in the tissues of plants and animals and even penetrate the germ cells to shatter or alter the very material of heredity upon which the shape of the future depends.”

Source: Silent Spring

“Poor communities, frequently communities of color but not exclusively, suffer disproportionately. If you look at where our industrialized facilities tend to be located, they're not in the upper middle class neighborhoods.”

Ifs Looks Suffering Community Poor Class Middle Color Environmental Middle Class Neighborhood Pollution Facility Upper Middle Class

Author:Carol Browner

“An unfolding technology has increased our economic strength and added to the convenience of our lives. But that same technology-we know now-carries danger with it. From the great smoke stacks of industry and from the exhausts of motors and machines, 130 million tons of soot, carbon and grime settle over the people and shroud the Nation's cities each year. From towns, factories, and stockyards, wastes pollute our rivers and streams, endangering the waters we drink and use.”

“The debris of civilization litters the landscapes and spoils the beaches. Conservation's concerns now is not only for man's enjoyment-but for man's survival.”

Men Civilization Survival Concern Environmental Landscape Beach Enjoyment Pollution Conservation Spoil Debris

Book:Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968-1969

Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968-1969

“And there are other dangers potentially more dangerous than even nuclear war. There is AIDS. There is terrorism. There are drugs and more to the point the darkness of our time that makes people seek escape in drugs. There is the slow poisoning of what we call "the environment" of all things as if with that absurdly antiseptic phrase we can conceal from ourselves that what we are really poisoning is home, is here, is us.”

People Ifs War Home Darkness Environment Dangerous Danger Drug All Things Environmental Terrorism Aids Nuclear Phrases Our Time Pollution Nuclear War Poisoning

Author:Frederick Buechner

“Another agricultural trend of growing concern is the increased nutrient content of coastal waters resulting from fertilizer runoff in agricultural regions. Augmented by urban sewage discharge in some situations, this results in huge algal blooms, which, as they die and decay, deplete the oxygen content in the water, leading to the death of the fish.”

Source: Vital Signs 1999-2000: The Environmental Trends That Are Shaping Our Future

“Each summer, for example, nitrogen and phosphate washing from farmlands in the Mississippi Valley enter the Gulf of Mexico, creating a massive algal bloom covering some 16,000 square kilometers. As the blooms die off, this area-roughly the size of New Jersey-is so deprived of oxygen that no fish survive.”

Source: Vital Signs 1999-2000: The Environmental Trends That Are Shaping Our Future

“Anyone who studies our poisonous drugs, our denatured food, our deathtrap automobiles and houses, our lung-rotting cities, must concede that we accept a good deal of murder as inevitable simply because it is done to make or save money.”

Done House Deals Cities Accepting Study Drug Murder Environmental Inevitable Pollution Lungs Automobile Saving Money Poisonous Rotting

Author:Joy Davidman

“As currently written, the laws require certain manufacturers and users of such chemicals to report any and all environmental releases-either accidental or routine-to air, water, or soil. The Toxics Release Inventory is the main registry of such events, and it is available to the public through the Environmental Protection Agency. It is hardly comprehensive. Toxic emissions reported to the federal government are thought to account for only 5 percent of all chemical releases.”

“It is essential that we take steps to prevent chemical substances from becoming environmental hazards. Unless we develop better methods to assure adequate testing of chemicals, we will be inviting the environmental crisis of the future.”

Steps Becoming Essentials Crisis Method Environmental Substance Chemicals Pollution Testing Adequate Hazards Inviting Environmental Crisis

Book:Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard M. Nixon, 1971

Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard M. Nixon, 1971