id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentences	flesch	summary	cache	txt
cord-337218-risqto89	Chu, Ellen W.	Environmental Impact, Concept and Measurement of	2013-02-05		.txt	text/plain	16635	718	46	107 ) sums up what he calls the hazards of human progress this way: ''Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up.'' Indeed, as the second decade of the 21st century begins, humans are ecosystem engineers on a planetary scale, and our global civilization threatens the life-sustaining capacity of all of Earth's environmental ''spheres'': But with nearly 7 billion people occupying or using resources from every place on Earth, humans are overwhelming the ability of other life-forms to make a living and depleting the planet's natural wealth. Chemicals -as varied as prescription drugs flowing out of sewage plants, pesticides, heavy metals, and cancer-causing by-products of countless manufacturing processes -now lace the world's water, soil, and air and the bodies of all living things, including humans. The list of chemicals' effects on living things is so long that chemical pollution equals humans' environmental impact in most people's minds, yet it is just one form of biotic impoverishment.	./cache/cord-337218-risqto89.txt	./txt/cord-337218-risqto89.txt