Hello ladies and gentlemen, this is the ambassador of South Korea.

     For the last few months, I had a quite busy days, preparing for the entrance of high school and entrance exams. I am really sorry, and I am sure I would do better from now on.

     During blank, I have worked on a project at home, concerned with the harmfulness of chemical substances. So for this article, I would like to give a basic information and theoretical knowledge of chemical substances.

     Chemical substances takes integral part in modern society. In the past, humans lived in the nature, and was the part of the nature. However, civilization and science has developed, and people started to make artificial things for their infinite desire. It is true that they made our lives easier we cannot imagine of living without shampoo, soap, cleanser and so on. But the important thing is that it effects our mother planet, Earth. Chemical substances are the main cause of air, water, soil pollution and they are inevitable. It's easy. I bet you have heard 'Global Warming', 'destruction of ozone layers' thousands of times in your life. These phenomenon is also related to human activity, especially chemicals. Actually, it is no exaggeration to say that almost all pollution is concerned with chemicals.

     The example of this is DDT, the type of pesticide. In 1940s, the efficacy of DDT as surprised the whole world and was used worldwide. But the fact was that DDT is not easily decomposed and leads to human health. In 1970s, USA has even stated that DDT is an endocrine disruptor, thus many nations have banned it nowadays. For further information on chemicals, you can visit WHO website, International Programme on Chemical Safety - Ten chemicals of major public health concern.

Link: http://www.who.int/ipcs/assessment/public_health/chemicals_phc/en/

     Let's talk about the status in Korea. As I stated before, chemical was closely related with air, water, and so on.

     The map shows air pollutants emissions. The darker it gets, the more chemical substances each city emits. The chemicals they surveyed includes about 105 kinds of chemicals, including formaldehyde, Propylthiouracil, Urethane, Carbon tetrachloride, Benzene, and so on. Well, I do not have much background knowledge on those specific chemicals, and in the near future, I would like to learn more about them :) Anyway, as you can see, most of the cities are rated very high.

     Next map shows the rate of chemical contained in waste water.

     Well, as you can see, most cities are not rated low. And urbanized cities and industrial cities are rated very high.

     So what are some efforts South Korea has been putting on for the chemical use?

     For instance, Ministry of Environment has been having a campaign on it. Picture below is the poster.

     They are providing solutions that companies and governments should do. They made more detailed actions on companies, however, since they are quite specialized, I would omit that. I believe that not only companies but also we can reduce the usage of chemical substances as well. For example, we can reduce the use of shampoo when we wash our hair. Also, we should try to trash medicines and batteries in proper way. With will, I believe that we can contribute on it. Thanks for reading :)