The most dangerous garbage that is in every home

Did you know that before the beginning of the 20th century, our planetwas not as polluted as it is today? This is because most household items were handmade, had a long lifespan, were often reused, and generally had a high price and were rarely thrown away. The problem of pollution began in the 1900s and worsened in the 1950s with the widespread use of plastic. Almost any item in the house eventually becomes garbage and goes to the city dump or even gets into nature and begins to poison it. Among this garbage, there are especially dangerous ones - they can harm not only the environment, but also human health. Let's find out about the most common ones.

In every apartment there is garbage that can harm people and nature.

Content

• 1 Harmfulness of fluorescent lamps
• 2 Harmfulness of finger batteries
• 3 Harmfulness of cleaning products
• 4 Harmfulness of paints and solvents
• 5 The dangers of old electronics

The dangers of fluorescent lamps

Until about the 1990s, everywhereordinary incandescent lamps were used, which emitted a warm color and consumed quite a lot of electricity. But then fluorescent lamps gained great popularity among the inhabitants of Russia and many countries. Their advantage is that they are bright and can burn for up to 90,000 hours. But these lamps have one big minus - they have a lot of mercury inside. It is commonly believed that each fluorescent lamp contains 3 to 5 milligrams of the poisonous metal.

Fluorescent Lamp

You can find out about the dangers of mercury and where it is used. in this material

The dangers of AA batteries

A common and dangerous type of garbage is alsoare batteries that are needed to operate many devices: children's toys, wall clocks, and so on. Their harmfulness lies in the fact that each battery contains heavy metals like zinc, nickel, cadmium, lead and the same mercury.

Finger batteries contain a lot of harmful substances

Being inside the case they do not represent forpeople at particular risk. However, if you just throw them in the trash, they end up in landfills and poison the soil and water. It is believed that one battery is capable of poisoning 400 liters of water and a plot of land up to 20 square meters. Therefore, never throw batteries into a bucket - do not be lazy and throw them into a special container (they are usually found in shopping centers).

Box for collecting old batteries

The dangers of cleaning products

Every kitchen has dishwashing detergent andin each bathroom - washing powder. All cleaning products contain surfactants (surfactants), which are very dangerous for human health. It is believed that each person annually swallows about a liter of detergents. Usually they enter our body while eating from washed dishes. Needless to say, all these chemicals also harm the environment. Unfortunately, there is no safe way to dispose of cleaning products, and even if there were, many would not bother with it. The main thing is not to pour the contents of the packages into the toilet or trash can.

The dangers of household chemicals have also been proven many times over.

The dangers of paints and solvents

Another type of hazardous household waste ispaints and varnishes: primers, paints, varnishes, enamels and so on. All of them contain substances that irritate the membranes of the eyes, respiratory tract and skin. With prolonged exposure to substances contained in paints and varnishes, a person may experience damage to the nervous system and many other health problems. And again, these chemical compounds can cause irreparable harm to the environment. Therefore, when disposing of cans with paints and solvents, in no case should their contents be allowed to spill out.

Paints contain many substances that can destroy the nervous system.

You will be interested: Strong evidence that humanity has already littered Mars

The dangers of old electronics

This article would not be complete withoutthere was mention of old electronic technology. Most likely, many people have a box with old Nokias, newer smartphones and other old equipment. Inside all these devices there are heavy metals that, as we have already found out, can harm human health and the cleanliness of the environment. In electronics, cadmium is a particularly dangerous element, the vapors and compounds of which are able to penetrate into the human body and accumulate in it in large quantities. All of them cause damage to the lungs, kidneys, gastrointestinal tract and bones.

Old electronics are also a common type of waste.

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Also in this article it would be quite possible to addexpired medicines. Many people throw them in a bucket or flush them down the toilet, which is absolutely impossible to do - you can read about the consequences here. And about how to properly dispose of old medicines, my colleague Lyubov Sokovikova told in this material.