The Correlation Between Contemporary Transit And T

The Correlation Between Contemporary Transit And T Essay, Research Paper Almost every person in today’s society has been affected by the common cold at one time or another. The symptoms could include a headache or a fever. Usually it yields to the immune system, thus letting the carrier return to the daily routine that is followed. However, imagine a disease so lethal, that every person who comes in contact with it perishes. This is the risk that a majority of the world takes without even knowing it. Whether its through travel, trade, or tourism, humans put themselves in great danger of introducing old and new pathogens into today’s fast-paced society. The ability to travel around the globe in a matter of hours increases the probability of a deadly microbe disseminating

around the world, killing millions in its path. Despite the precautions that tourists and merchants take when traveling abroad, the ever increasing mobility of humans in today’s society is, and will always be, the biggest threat to global disease epidemics. Although ships are used to transfer people and goods safely from one port to another, the latter can also transport man’s greatest enemy. A ship can not rely on shape to help it stay afloat. Ballast tanks are needed. These tanks are designed to open and close to help fluctuate the height of the ship. When a tank floods with water, it permits a ship to safely cruise under a low lying bridge. Besides the water, many organisms especially microbes are taken in as well (Bright *). Since many waterborne diseases such as cholera

and dengue fever live in aquatic habitats, ships pose one of the biggest threats in the spreading of disease. Even though ballast tanks pose a great danger on cargo and freighting ships, containers play an equal role in the spreading of disease. Huge on-board storage containers used to transport seeds and grain have been recognized as superhighways for many small creatures. The Asian tiger mosquito is a belligerent insect that can carry at least 17 different viral diseases including encephalitis and malaria (Bright *). Unless society fails to see the risk that containers cause when ships travel abroad, maladies of all kinds will start making lethal manifestations. More than 28,000 ships make up the world’s major source of trade and transportation. On any given day, a ship’s

wake is transporting approximately 3,000 different species including pathogens (Bright *). Such a high abundance of microbial life transported on ships could pose numerous problems in the future.. Transportation-related outbreaks are not contemporary as the spread of diseases through sea travel spans many centuries. Smallpox, a terrible disease that traveled the world on ships, caused many physical deformities in the hundreds of millions it killed in the twentieth century (Armelagos *). Every ship docks in a port, and every port connects to a city, and every city connects to the world. Dr. Richard Horton states that, “…mega-cities are global cities in every sense; they are part of an international system of trade and communication – and disease. They have no limits; air

travel and other routes of transportation have rendered their influence and vulnerability boundless” (*). Thousands of people travel to cities everyday for business or pleasure. If just one person were the host of an infectious disease, an epidemic could surface. That person could travel to almost any other city by means of air travel and inadvertently propagate this disease. This is the problem that human beings face daily because, “The greatest threat to the health of human’s are cities, providing fertile breeding grounds for the deadliest known germs” (Horton *). Cities are probably the greatest danger in the spread of diseases, because of the high population density. “The city is the bug’s dream come true and the human’s greatest weakness” (Horton *). Unless