Exercise 5. Read and translate the text

Rational Use of Natural Resources

The problem of rational use of natural resources is closely connected with environmental protection.

Today the interaction between society and nature resulting from intense industrial growth throughout the world on the basis of existing technologies that produce a diversity of by-products has attained dimensions that are so extreme that they direaten to mankind's very existence, both through the depletion of natural resources and through the pollution of man's environment that is dangerous to his life.

It is estimated that the aggregate volume of goods and services in developed countries now doubles every 15 years, and there is a tendency for that period to decrease. But the volume of waste from economic activities continues to double, too. It contaminates the atmosphere, water bodies, and the soil. For each inhabitant of industrially developed countries approximately 30 tons of matter are extracted each year, of which only 1.5

per cent is embodied in products that are consumed, whde the rest is a huge amount of industrial and household waste discharged into the environment Here are some figures. In the 1970s, about 2 million chemical compounds (aside from chemical fertilizers) were discharged into earth's biosphere. Now, according to the World Health Organization, 40,000 chemical agents used by mankind are harmful for the human organism. Every year over 250,000 new chemical compounds are synthesized in the world, of which about 300 are utilized in production and may enter the environment.

Environmental pollution in the industrialized countries is reaching formidable proportions. For example, in Japan in 2003 it amounted to $ 50 billion, and in the United States in 2002 the damage caused by air pollution alone was as high as $ 85 billion.

Modern industrial production creates basically new materials and wastes hitherto (досі, до цього часу) non-existent in nature and in many respects foreign to living organisms by their physical and chemical structure. The influence exerted by new chemical substances, new types of energy, and various physical radiations on man has given rise to formerly unknown diseases, namely, genetic, toxicological, allergic, respiratory, endocrine and others. The problem of a healthy environment has now become as vital as that of providing man with foodstuffs or energy.