Environmental Agents Most Likely to Kill You…

This is an attempt to create a thumbnail sketch of environmental risk…which of course includes many variables. By necessity, there will be less discussion of things like “quality of life” and “socio-economics”, and an emphasis on the word DEATH, so that you will pay attention to this important worldwide cause.

Environmental Deaths are much higher in over-populated, and/or less developed Nations.

Historically, there have been many things taking turns being “most likely to kill you”. For a long time, childbirth and starvation were the mortality leaders, possibly alongside those ever-popular killers like “getting eaten by an apex predator” and “getting massacred in a war”. However, this article will focus upon “Environmental Agents”, which have been the killing rage of the last 100 years or so. Some of these need to be put in a proper perspective, so here goes.

1. PESTICIDES/HERBICIDES: Pesticides, herbicides, and other “chemicals” received a lot of attention from the 70s onward, and for good reason. They were accused of everything from birth defects to cancer, in the days of DDT. Since then, fears of pesticide damage have waned, thanks chiefly to the efforts of organic farming, and new pesticides that break down quickly after use. However, the pesticide family is still thought to be an imminent danger to farm workers, and to a lesser degree all of us, in certain birth-defects and cancers. They are thought to cause some degree…