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Amanda Anna G

Air pollution a leading cause of cancer - U.N. agency | Reuters - 0 views

  • The air we breathe is laced with cancer-causing substances and is being officially classified as carcinogenic to humans, the World Health Organization's cancer agency said on Thursday.
  • Air pollution, mostly caused by transport, power generation, industrial or agricultural emissions and residential heating and cooking, is already known to raise risks for a wide range of illnesses including respiratory and heart diseases.
  • Research suggests that exposure levels have risen significantly in some parts of the world, particularly countries with large populations going through rapid industrialization, such as China.
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    This article relates to externalities of production, since air pollution caused by industries and transport emissions is classified to be carcinogenic to humans and raises the risk for illness. The harmful effect the industries make, causes a negative externality upon the third party- the society breathing in polluted air, who indirectly receives an extra cost by the pollution.
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    This article states that air pollution is the main cause of cancer. In terms of economics, this means that it is an external cost of production received in consumption - as the process of recovering from cancer is very costly.
Yassine G

Pollution as a Public Good - NYTimes.com - 1 views

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    This is a very interesting public good. It is both helpful for the government and the public. Pollution will decrease, which means better and healthier living condition, and the cost of the permits allows the government to add new public gods or improve the quality of its services. 
Marenne M

True Costs of So-called Cheap Food | Ellen Gustafson - 0 views

  • when you look at the prices of so-called "conventional" junk food compared with local, organic fruits and veggies, on a calorie per dollar basis, the junk often wins.
  • Many people assume that it's the produce or organic foods that "cost more" than highly processed, shelf-stable ubiquitous and cheap junk food, but what if the price tags that we see don't tell the whole story?
  • hich requires acres of corn fields, seeds, gallons of water, gas for heavy machinery, pounds of fertilizer and sprays of pesticides, and government subsidies.
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  • give them antibiotics, deal with their waste, transport them to slaughter, power the slaughter facility, refrigerate the ground meat and then cook it
  • processed wheat bun and condiments.
  • so efficient that all of those costs amortize over tons of ground beef and fixings to make a really cheap burger, or are there parts of that whole list of "costs" that don't actually show up in the price of our fast food burgers?
  • Examples of costs not currently factored into our food supply include the environmental outcomes of chemically-intensive and petroleum-intensive agriculture, costs for soil erosion, real water and irrigation costs, pesticide and waste runoff that creates dead zones in our waterways (like the "New Jersey-sized dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico" that stems from nitrogen runoff from our Corn Belt) and then affects the livelihoods of fishermen and shrimp farmers in the Gulf region.
  • Hidden health costs like our global obesity epidemic and the food-related public health issues of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer are certainly not included in the cost of your fast food meal.
  • unpaid externalities like low wages for food workers that often mean government subsidies like food assistance, which is what over 50 percent of fast food worker families are getting
  • "value" and "low prices" of cheap food that we see at the cash register, are not the whole story
  • We are paying today in our health and our taxes and our children
  • will be paying tomorrow with a degraded environment, dirty water, decimated communities and jobs, and denigrated health.
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    This article describes how processed food and fast food have many negative externalities which in the end makes them cost more than organic foods which are more expensive in the stores. Processed foods may be cheaper than organic food, however the pollution during the process of producing the food, the health problems involved and the low wages which are unpaid for are all consequences which in the end will make these foods cost more.
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