The environment of Belgium has been heavily polluted on all areas (water, air, soil, noise, and biodiversity). In the environment report 2006, Belgium has been given the last places in all of these areas. In other documents things are not much better -if not worse-. An introduction: This article or section contains information that has not been verified and thus might not be reliable. ... The Lachine Canal, in Montreal, is badly polluted Pollution is the release of harmful environmental contaminants, or the substances so released. ... Area is a physical quantity expressing the size of a part of a surface. ... Water (from the Old English waeter; c. ... Look up air in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Soil is the material on the surface of a lithosphere subject to weathering, and especially the earthy portion of that material. ... NOiSE is a one volume manga created by Tsutomu Nihei as a prequel to his acclaimed ten-volume work, Blame!. It offers some rather sketchy information concerning the Megastructures origins and initial size, as well as the origins of Silicon life. ... Rainforests are the most biodiverse ecosystems on earth Biodiversity or biological diversity is the diversity of life. ... A document is a writing that contains information. ...

Air

In Flanders, until recently, there was an estimated 13,500 mortalities each year due to air pollution (alone). However through researcher Vincent Du Four of the University of Ghent, we now know that this number is wrong. There are at least 140,000 mortalities when we consider only the organic pollutants, thus without other agents such as heavy metals. 33% of this is caused by road traffic, the rest is made up by heavy industry, house heatening, vapourising manure, solvents in paint, ... It has also been reported that the air, because of the pollution is highly carcinogenic. Besides this, one should not expect that the degree of air pollution is better in some part of the country. According to Vincent Du Four's research, the air pollution in the entire country of Belgium is very severe. Some places, are even as polluted as industrial cities in the ruhr area, such as Olen. Besides the health risk of polluted air, it also makes the weather oppressive (especially in summer). In fact, in such degree that in summer, visiting Africans complain it's "too hot". A quick look to the sky might also open one's eyes of the seriousness of the situation, since the skies are constantly appearing as steel grey (because of the carbon). But just to be on the safe side, here's a scientific report. Flanders (Dutch: Vlaanderen) has several main meanings: the social, political and cultural community of the Flemings, through its social and political organizations, its media, universities, ... ; some prefer to call this the Flemish community, other refers to this as the Flemish nation; a constituent governing institution of the federal Belgian... Ghent University (in Dutch, Universiteit Gent, abbreviated UGent) is one of the two large Flemish universities. ... A wrong is a concept in law and ethics. ... Heavy metals, in chemistry, are chemical elements of a particular range of atomic weights. ... Heavy industry does not have a single fixed meaning compared to light industry. ... A substance is soluble in a fluid if it dissolves in the fluid. ... Dried green paint Paint is the general term for a family of products used to protect and add color to an object or surface by covering it with a pigmented coating. ... Look up air in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In pathology, a carcinogen is any substance or agent that promotes cancer. ... Map of the Ruhr Area The Ruhr Area (German Ruhrgebiet, colloquially Ruhrpott or Kohlenpott or simply Pott) is an urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, consisting of a number of large (former) industrial cities bordered by the rivers Ruhr to the south, Rhine to the west, and Lippe to... Olen is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Antwerp. ... Risk is the potential impact (positive or negative) to an asset or some characteristic of value that may arise from some present process or from some future event. ... For other senses of this word, see Summer (disambiguation). ... Look up hot in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A typical daytime sky. ... In mathematics and the mathematical sciences, a constant is a fixed, but possibly unspecified, value. ... Grey or gray (see spelling differences) is a colour seen commonly in nature. ... This article does not refer to the ancient city Side on the Black Sea coast of Turkey, or the ancient city of Side in Laconia, Greece. ... For the scientific journal named Science, see Science (journal). ... A report is a type of document written by someone or a group of people. ...

Air pollution agents

Off course, air is a mixture of gases, mostly containing NO², CO², NO, ???, ... Thus if one speaks of philthy air, we must carefully debrief every agent, say witch agent is too high, too low and what agents normally should not be in there (and in Belgium there are quite allot of these "runaways"). So let's get started: In chemistry, a mixture is the product of a mechanical blending or mixing of chemical substances like elements and compounds, without chemical bonding or other chemical change, so that each ingredient substance retains its own chemical properties and makeup. ... A gas is one of the four main phases of matter (after solid and liquid, and followed by plasma), that subsequently appear as a solid material is subjected to increasingly higher temperatures. ...

The biggest share in this is nitrogen dioxide (NO²), carbon dioxide (CO²), formaldehide, benzeene, and some 'minor' pollutants as ozone, fine particles, ??? For other uses, see Ozone (disambiguation). ... Fine particles Fine particles is an air pollutant mainly produced by cars running on diesel. ...

!! The above agents still need description !!

Fine dust

Each year a quantity of 17,000 tons of fine dust (of which 65% is pollution by soil degradation together with some herbicides and pesticides) is blown into the air. This amount makes up around 20% of the air pollution in Belgium. The other 80% comes from neighbouring countries. Retrogression and degradation are two regressive evolution processes associated with the loss of equilibrium of a stable soil. ...

Due to new research by the University of G(h)ent, there are 14,000 per million mortalities. And, since Belgium houses around 11 million people, this would result in 154.000 mortalities for fine dust(!) alone in Belgium.

Depending off course on the winddirection the number of fine dust changes allot. But one can roughly say that there is about 20 to 30 micrograms per cubic metre (mg/m³).

Lastly, to show how bad it really is, here are some examples:

• in 2006, the European norm for fine dust for an entire year (!) was already surpassed in March.
• just running next to the freeway, for no longer than 5 minutes, can already cause a measurable degree of permanent lung damage.

High-capacity freeway interchange in Los Angeles, California. ... In mathematics, a measure is a function that assigns a number, e. ... In grammar the comparative is the form of an adjective or adverb which denotes the degree or grade by which a person, thing, or other entity has a property or quality greater or less in extent than that of another. ... The lungs flank the heart and great vessels in the chest cavity. ...

Water

79% of the surface water is heavily polluted, another 19% is 'less' polluted, and 2 percent makes the European standard. This is partly because most of the polluted sewer water is not actively purified, only the rain water is, (which is mostly already clean). Surface water is water on the ground or in a stream, river, lake, sea or ocean; as opposed to groundwater. ...

VMM and Aquafin, 2 government supported organistations will try to improve this in the near future by doubling the water purificaction facilities. So opposed to 228, there will be around 400 facilities. Of course the real problem lies with taking up too much rain water in the sewers, witch will keep work on for years to come. The memory pages of the virtual address space seen by the process, may reside non-contiguously in primary, or even secondary storage. ... The word real has many different meanings. ... Look up Problem in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Problem refers to a situation, condition, or issue that is unresolved or undesired. ... Sewers transport wastewater from buildings to treatment facilities. ...

Very few fish have been reported in the rivers, and bading in the rivers is mere hazardous. Not only the rivers, but the shores are polluted also (1% of the baders got ill in 2004) And lastly, the fish that do swim in the rivers and shores have dangerous levels of pcb's in their bodies.

Water pollution agents

Groundwater is mainly polluted by nitrate and pesticides, while the rivers suffer from domestic wastewater, that is still untreated in some belgian cities. Industrial wastewater also contributes and leaves the Escaut totally damaged in belgium. According to the quality norms, the most frequent excesses are from cadmium, chrome, mercury, lead, cyanide, detergents and different pesticides. In inorganic chemistry, a nitrate is a salt of nitric acid. ... the plane is spreading pesticide. ...

Soil

The statistics are just being started and already are 16,653 parcels filed as heavily polluted. By the end of 2007 more data will be available (30% will be charted).

!someone search and post already available statistics, please !

Noise

33% of all flemish people have troubles with the level of noise in Flanders during the day. At night, 42% of the flemish people have troubles with it. The level of noise is probably above 42 decibels and can thus contribute to increased bloodpressure, heartproblems, depression, migraine and other according to the WHO. Most of the sound comes from road traffic. Although not such an important factor for the environment as the other (soil, water and air), noise levels can annoy birds, and other animal species and thus descreasing biodiversity. Turkish Level, January 2006 LeveL is a magazine about computer and video games in Turkey and the Czech Republic; these two brother divisions occasionally exchange content. ... NOiSE is a one volume manga created by Tsutomu Nihei as a prequel to his acclaimed ten-volume work, Blame!. It offers some rather sketchy information concerning the Megastructures origins and initial size, as well as the origins of Silicon life. ... Flanders (Dutch: Vlaanderen) has several main meanings: the social, political and cultural community of the Flemings, through its social and political organizations, its media, universities, ... ; some prefer to call this the Flemish community, other refers to this as the Flemish nation; a constituent governing institution of the federal Belgian... The decibel is a dimensionless unit (like percent) that is a measure of ratios on a logarithmic scale. ... Who can refer to: WHO, World Health Organization The Who, a British rock band The Guess Who, a Canadian rock band who (pronoun), an English language interrogative pronoun. ...

Biodiversity

There are several sources from witch we can determine the biodiversity in Belgium: from the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, UNEP, IUCN, and to a lesser extent from the Belgian Government's follow-up on biodiversity ( biodiversity.be and it's 'Biodiversity in Belgium'-publication) and GBIF.org. Klaus Töpfer, UNEP Exec. ... The World Conservation Union or International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) is an international organization dedicated to natural resource conservation. ...

Conclusion

In the environment report 2006 Belgium has been given practically the last place of all the countries in the world for biodiversity. By following the example of the IUCN or The World Conservation Union's Red List and the aproach of the Dutch, who also have their own personalised red list, there has been a specific red list created for Belgium. The link below will guide you there. Besides the electronic version you can also by the book "Atlas van de Flora van Vlaanderen en het Brussels Gewest", witch includes the paper version of the personalised red list edition too. Rainforests are the most biodiverse ecosystems on earth Biodiversity or biological diversity is the diversity of life. ... The World Conservation Union or International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) is an international organization dedicated to natural resource conservation. ... The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (also known as the IUCN Red List and Red Data List), created in 1963, is the worlds most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of plant and animal species. ...

The unsaid

There is still somewhat of a taboo on the subject in Belgium. environmental awareness is very low in Belgium, witch could be (partly) due to the fact that although environmental actions (such as by the VMM) have been precisely covered in the media, in depth-information about the international environmental situation is never available by that very same media. For example: tax benefits on "clean" or better said less-polluting cars are precisely covered, while worldwide air quality (and comparisations between Belgium and -say- France) are not covered by the media. Besides that no real information on environmental issues are given (at least no comparisations to other countries or global charts), there are other problems associated with this aswell. One being the fear for Belgians to go to countries deeper in the south, as being "too hot". This fear comes from the unbearable heat in Belgium during summer, witch is in fact caused by the greenhouse gases, appearing troughout the country. A taboo is a strong social prohibition (or ban) relating to any area of human activity or social custom declared as sacred and forbidden; breaking of the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society. ... Information as a concept bears a diversity of meanings, from everyday usage to technical settings. ... link titleThe word international can mean: Between nations or encompassing several nations. ... The Situationist International (SI), an international political and artistic movement, originated in the Italian village of Cosio dArroscia on 28 July 1957 with the fusion of several extremely small artistic tendencies: the Lettrist International , the International movement for an imaginist Bauhaus, and the London Psychogeographical Association. ... The World in Plate Carrée Projection In English, world is rooted in a compound of the obsolete words were, man, and eld, age; thus, its oldest meaning is Age of Man. ... The Air Quality Index (AQI) is a standardized index of the air quality in a given location, given in parts per billion. ... Greenhouse gases are gaseous components of the atmosphere that contribute to the greenhouse effect. ...

It could be worse

Some critics argue that altough Belgium is already pointed out as being one of the worst in the world when it comes down to air quality and associated health problems, it is still quoted "too healthy". This is because, on global maps we see the polluting gases but we do not see how much is already absorbed by the earth. In Belgium, there is a constant high humidity and there is high precipitation. Water binds with a big part of the gases in the gas-mixture, causing it to fall back down to the ground an thus effectively eliminating a part of them. When this absorption by rain were not to be counted, Belgium would get a place even further to the back in the listings. The Air Quality Index (AQI) is a standardized index of the air quality in a given location, given in parts per billion. ... Problem refers to a situation, condition, or issue that is unresolved or undesired. ... -1... Earth (often referred to as The Earth) is the third planet in the solar system in terms of distance from the Sun, and the fifth in order of size. ... Humidity is the concentration of water vapor in the air. ... In chemistry, a mixture is the product of a mechanical blending or mixing of chemical substances like elements and compounds, without chemical bonding or other chemical change, so that each ingredient substance retains its own chemical properties and makeup. ...

See also

• Belgian Red List (dutch version)

External links

• Research of Vincent Du Four
• Air pollution in Belgium
• Environment Report 2006
• Nitrogen dioxide pollution in the world (image)
• Tequila-Belgium
• IUCN's global red list
• Biodiversity.be
• GBIF.org
• Millenium Ecosystem Assessment