Shankar IAS Test: Environmental Organizations - UPSC MCQ

• Lead is highly toxic to plants and animals including man.
• A lead generally affects children more severely than adults. Lead poisoning causes a variety of symptoms.
• These include liver and kidney damage, reduction in hemoglobin formulation, mental retardation, abnormality infertility, and pregnancy.

• DDT Toxic pesticides such as BHC, PCB, DDT, etc., are not easily degraded and are long-lasting in the environment. Their concentration, therefore, goes on increasing in water and soil with successive applications.
• DDT was sprayed for many years on marshes to control mosquitoes. The DDT has been bio-magnified from water to fish-eating birds and humans.
• DDT is known to depress the activity of estrogen, the female sex hormone, and testosterone, a male sex hormone.

• Trans Fats are formed during the process of addition of hydrogen atoms to oils, a process which industry prefers as it keeps the oil from turning rancid and ensures a longer shelf life. (E.g trans-fatty acid in vanaspati).
• Trans Fats are associated with a host of serious health problems ranging from diabetes to heart disease to cancer.
• The health ministry in 2008 came out with a notification for labeling food including Trans fats.
• Junk food is high in trans fats, salt, and sugar, junk food gives no nutrition. Getting addicted to it is making the young vulnerable to hypertension, heart diseases, diabetes, and obesity.

Blue baby syndrome:

• It is believed to be caused by high nitrate contamination in groundwater resulting in the decreased oxygen-carrying capacity of hemoglobin in babies leading to death.
• The groundwater is thought to be contaminated by the leaching of nitrate generated from fertilizer used in agricultural lands and waste dumps.
• It may also be related to some pesticides (DDT, PCBs, etc), which cause ecotoxicological problems in the food chains of living organisms, increasing BOD, which kills aquatic animals.

Sick Building Syndrome (SBS):

• Sick building syndrome (SBS) is a combination of ailments (a syndrome) associated with an individual’s place of work or residence.
• Most of the sick building syndrome is related to poor indoor air quality.
• Sick building causes are frequently pinned down to flaws in the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems.
• Other causes have been attributed to contaminants produced by outgassing of some types of building materials, volatile organic compounds (VOC), molds, improper exhaust ventilation of ozone, light industrial chemicals used within, or lack of adequate fresh air intake air filtration.

• A flagship species is a species chosen to represent an environmental cause, such as an ecosystem in need of conservation.
• These species are chosen for their vulnerability, attractiveness, or distinctiveness to engender support and acknowledgment from the public at large.
• Thus, the concept of a flagship species holds that, by giving publicity to a few key species, the support given to those species will successfully leverage conservation of entire ecosystems are all species contained therein.
  Example: Indian tiger, African elephant, giant panda of China, mountain gorilla of Central Africa, orangutan of Southeast Asia, and the leatherback sea turtle.

• Keystone species is a species whose addition to or loss from an ecosystem leads to major changes in abundance or occurrence of at least one other species.
• Certain species in an ecosystem are considered more important in determining the presence of many other species in that ecosystem.
• All top predators (Tiger, Lion, Crocodile, Elephant) are considered as keystone species because it regulates all other animals’ population indirectly. Hence top predators are given much consideration in conservation.

Indicator species:

• Indicator species is a species whose presence indicates the presence of a set of other species and whose absence indicates the lack of that entire set of species.
• An indicator species is any biological species that defines a trait or characteristic of the environment.
• Many indicator species of the ocean systems are fish, invertebrates, periphyton, macrophytes, and specific species of ocean birds (like the Atlantic Puffin). Amphibian indicates chemicals, global warming, and air pollution. Lichens are indicators of air quality and are sensitive to sulfur dioxide.

• Umbrella species is a wide-ranging species whose requirements include those of many other species.
• The protection of umbrella species automatically extends protection to other species.
• These are species selected for making conservation-related decisions, typically because protecting these species indirectly protects the many other species that make up the ecological community of its habitat.

Yokkaichi asthma: 

• The disease occurred in the city of Yokkaichi in Mie Prefecture, Japan between 1960 and 1972.
• The burning of petroleum and crude oil released large quantities of sulfur oxide that caused severe smog, resulting in severe cases of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic bronchitis, pulmonary emphysema, and bronchial asthma among the local inhabitants.