CHAPTER 15 ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS: WASTES AND POLUTON 489 FIGURE 15.1 A healthy environment supports a healthy community A healthy environment, one relatively free from pollution, supports healthy communities(see Figure 15. 1). Residues and wastes from human activities can adversely affect the environment by damaging wildlife habitats, undermining food production, contaminating sources of water, altering climate, and threatening human health Factors contributing to an ever-increasing number of environmental hazards are: (1)urbanization, (2)industrialization, 3) human population growth, and(4) the production and use of disposable products and containers. Urbanization, the urbanization process in which people come together to live in cities, often results in people the proces by which living in overcrowded conditions and inadequate space for the disposal of wastes, to live in ife making waste management more difficult(see Figure 15.2). Concomitant industri. alization, resulting in the generation of new types of wastes, has complicated the waste disposal problem because of the generation of hazardous waste Population growth has also contributed to the overall waste disposal problem, as has the reliance on disposable containers. Not only are there more people than there were 30 years ago, but the amount of refuse generated by each person as we enter the twenty-first century is much greater than it was in the 1960s, when reusable containers began to be replaced by throwaway containers(see Table 15.1)