The problem of studying the impact on his health, on his living conditions, on his future of those changes in the natural environment that are caused by himself, that is, by uncontrolled activities and selfishness of man himself, has risen to the top of the agenda.
So, human activity changes the nature of the environment, and in most (not always, but in most) cases, these changes have a negative impact on humans. And it is not difficult to understand why: over millions of years his body has adapted to quite certain living conditions. But at the same time, any activity – industrial, agricultural, recreational – is the source of human life, the basis of his existence. So, man will inevitably continue to change the characteristics of the environment. And then – to look for ways to adapt to them.
Hence one of the main modern practical activities of ecology: the creation of such technologies that have the least impact on the environment. Technologies with this property are called ecological technologies. The scientific (engineering) disciplines that deal with the principles of creating such technologies are collectively called engineering or industrial ecology.
As industry develops, as people begin to realize that they cannot exist in an environment created from their own waste, the role of these disciplines keeps growing, and almost every technical university now has departments of industrial ecology focused on some kind of production.
It should be noted that the less waste polluting the environment there will be, the better we learn to use the waste from one production as raw material for another. This is how the idea of “waste-free” production is born. Such productions, or rather such chains of productions, solve another extremely important problem: they save the natural resources that people use in their productive activities. We live on a planet with very limited natural resources. This must not be forgotten!
Today, industrial ecology covers a very wide range of problems, all very different and no longer of a biological nature. It would be more appropriate to talk about a number of engineering ecological disciplines: mining ecology, energy ecology, chemical production ecology, etc. It might seem that the use of the word “ecology” in combination with these disciplines is not entirely appropriate. However, it is not. Such disciplines are very different in their specific content, but they are united by a common methodology and a common goal: to minimize the impact of industrial activities on the processes of the circulation of substances in Nature and environmental pollution.
At the same time with this engineering activity arises the problem of its assessment, which is the second area of practical activity of ecology. For this purpose it is necessary to learn how to identify significant parameters of the environment, to develop methods of their measurement and create a system of norms of permissible pollution. Let me remind you that non-polluting industries cannot exist in principle! Therefore, the concept of maximum permissible concentrations of harmful substances in the air, water, soil… was born.
This most important area of activity is called environmental monitoring. The name is not quite correct, because the word “monitoring” means measurement, observation. Of course, it is very important to learn how to measure these or those characteristics of the environment, and it is even more important to bring them into a system. But the most important thing is to understand what to measure in the first place, and, of course, to develop and justify the MPC standards themselves. It is necessary to know how these or those values of biosphere parameters influence human health and its practical activities. And there are still a lot of unresolved issues. But the Ariadne’s thread is already outlined – human health. This is the ultimate, supreme judge of all activities of ecologists.