Environmental pollution and their socioeconomic impacts

Abstract

Environmental pollution is increasingly becoming an issue of significant public interest in many developing countries and the international community at large. The growing socioeconomic developments as witnessed globally in recent times due to rapid urbanization and industrialization have led to the overexploitation of natural resources, while inadvertently resulted in severe environmental problems. In this chapter, we attempted to present the effect of environmental pollution to our physical environment as well as its socioeconomic impacts. Specifically, we focused more on the major types of pollution, which are widely recognized as international public health problems, namely, land/soil, water, air, noise, and plastic/microplastic pollution, enumerating their effects and how they have acted as an obstruction to the social and economic progress by placing tremendous pressure on resources and environment. Possible ways of ensuring environmental quality and sustainability leading to improved public health and well-being alongside with different kinds of intervention were proposed.