By Cleo Gaona
What used to be only the moonlight dancing alone on the water of Botany Bay has now been replaced with a plethora of artificial flashing lights and thick clouds.
A late-night walk with my boyfriend along The Grand Parade, Monterey, turned into a spiral of desolation and worry for the future of our world. We discussed how insane it is that Sydney has evolved from when it was just bush and beach back in 1788 to what it is now, industrial sites emitting mass pollution.
The thick smog hovering above the horizon is not just a cloud of water molecules, however, it is infested with toxic fumes from the factories seen in the mid left of the picture.
While I was driving home the night that I took this photo, the amount of pollution I was witnessing being emitted by these factories in Botany Bay made my jaw drop. Air pollution is overlooked by the civilians of Sydney, unless you’re an asthmatic who struggles with the city’s air quality daily like my mother Janette Burrows.
“The clouds never used to look like this when I was your age Cleo,” ” said Burrows, who has lived in Sydney for most of her childhood and adult life. “Those clouds of pollution are going to kill us.”
It is a fact that exposure to highly polluted air is linked to breathing problems and other serious health issues. The World Health Organisation (WHO) states on its website: “Air pollution is a risk for all-cause mortality as well as specific diseases. — they include stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, pneumonia, and cataract.“
Sydney’s residents walk the streets everyday at risk of serious health issues. In fact, the Cancer Council predicts that one in two people will have some type of cancer by the time they’re 85 as a result of our artificial environment.
A story on the CNN website states: “A study in the journal Nature Reviews Cancer suggests that cancer has become a more common disease only recently, because of modern lifestyle.”
Before humans evolved into the consumers we are today, we used to live off the land. Surviving and thriving from the natural resources that the earth naturally produces. Over time, we have been destroying this miracle of life and bringing ourselves down with it.
Not only is the abundance of lights dancing on the water we have now fake, but these factories have been proven to be linked Sydney’s harmful air pollution.
Danger is in the air that we breathe, which makes it hard for us to stop and smell the roses.
Featured image: The view from Monterey Baths facing east at Botany Bay. Photo: Cleo Gaona