Environmental Pollution Defined
Environmental pollution is the process of defiling the quality of environmental resources such as air, water and land with toxic wastes which in turn endangers the wellbeing of organism, species or race in a particular geographical space. Thus, environmental pollution can be conceived as ‘external cost’, ‘spill-over cost’ or ‘neighbourhood cost’ which occur due to human mismanagement of systems that support life on earth-the air, oceans and ecosystems.
A review of academic literatures revealed that environmental pollution has for several decades stand as world-class problem. Since the 1950s incidences of industrial pollution, the Donora Smog of 1948 in United States and London Fog of 1952 in Britain which result in many hospital admissions and death of people, environmental pollution has been an issue of global concern. More explicitly, in 1972, the United Nations Human Environment Conference at Stockholm disclosed that industrial activities in developed and industrialized countries of the world are producing harmful wastes which are causing severe damage to the environment upon which both living and non-living things depend for survival. Aside that, studies have shown that there has been trans-boundary conflict and crisis over indecent wastes discharge among developed and developing countries of the world. Since then, governments and non-governmental organizations come together to promote environmental protection policies and protect