Replies should be no less than 75 words each.

1 This should be addressed to Eric Trout

The BP oil spill is known to have a couple different names. The BP oil disaster, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Macondo blowout whatever name you call it, it was one of the largest petroleum industry environmental disasters ever. This incident occurred on April 20th 2010. It is believed that methane gas somehow made its way into drilling riser and eventually ignited. “It is estimated that somewhere around 4.9 million barrels of oil was discharged into the ocean. To put that number into perspective, the average person is more familiar with a gallon of milk. That number equates to about 210 million gallons of oil into the gulf waters.” (Pallerdy, 2016). Not only was the disaster hazardous for the environment but there were also eleven people killed during this incident. Although BP attempted to activate the oil rigs blowout preventer (BOP), a fail-safe mechanism designed to close the channel through which oil was drawn, the device malfunctioned. Forensic analysis of the BOP completed the following year determined that a set of massive blades known as blind shear rams designed to slice through the pipe carrying oil had malfunctioned because the pipe had bent under the pressure of the rising gas and oil. (Pallerdy, 2016).

A response of unprecedented nature ascended into the area. Skimmer ships, floating booms, controlled burns and oil dispersant. All ideas designed to help alleviate the adverse effects the oil would cause on the environment. Some of the main concern started to shift to the environment and the wildlife. Fishing industries and tourism were going to be severely affected. Oil cleanup crews worked around the clock to try to prevent the disaster from spreading. “The oil spill, as the President said, is an environmental disaster. The spill killed pelicans and dolphins and sea turtles and shrimp and wetlands that might protect the coast from storm surges” (Horowitz, 2014). The various cleanup efforts were coordinated by the National Response Team, a group of government agencies headed by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). BP, Transocean, and several other companies were held liable for the billions of dollars in costs accrued. Coast Guard cleanup patrols were known to come to stop around June 2013 in Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi. In Louisiana patrols would continue for almost another year. (Pallerdy, 2016). It is still unknown to this day on what effects this spill will continue to have on the environment.

2. This should be addressed to Shaun Heath

Global warming is a term that is commonly heard on the news and printed in newspapers. Concerns for the increasing temperature of the Earth in the 21stcentury are widely known. There have been many discussions about what the rising temperatures do to our planet as a whole and the wildlife that is impacted. However, how does climate change directly impact the health of humans across the world? Climate change not only has severe implications for wildlife and the world around us, but for our own health as well.

Humans directly impact the environment every day and one of the most well-known ways is through carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Examples of CO2 emissions include burning fossil fuels for things like electricity in our homes and fuel for our cars (EPA, 2017). These gases have attributed to the rise in the overall temperature of the Earth thus leading to what we know as global warming. Rossati notes that since the 1950s the Earth’s temperature has risen 0.9 degrees Celsius which has caused polar ice and snow melting leading to a rise in ocean levels (2017). These changes seem small but can have a big impact on our health. Negative effects of global warming can include both communicable diseases and non-communicable impacts. Increases in communicable diseases occur as an indirect result of global warming. Kumaresan & Sathiakumar note in their article that climate change contributes to extreme weather events such as flooding. A result of flooding, especially in low-income regions, is the spread of diseases such a cholera (2010). In addition, as the temperature of the Earth rises, there is an increase in vector-borne diseases. Mosquitos and ticks have life cycles that are related to temperature changes. With a rise in overall temperature, they have a longer chance to complete their life cycle and increase their population. The diseases they carry include: West Nile Virus, Malaria, Lyme disease, and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever to name a few. (Rossati, 2017). This information shows that climate change is not only a cause for concern for our environment but a risk to our overall health as well.

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