ABSTRACT
People in all industrialized countries have daily contact with pollution problems: smarting eyes in exhaust-filled streets, decaying marble monuments, murky fishing water, the fact that 80-90 per cent of all cases of cancer are influenced by environmental factors and that the number of allergies are rapidly increasing. In Sweden it has been calculated that 12 000 to 16 000 people die every year because of environmental pollution (Gillberg, 1988). At the same time the rate of extinction of animal and plant species is accelerating. Between 1900 and 1950 one species disappeared annually; in 1990 between one and three species disappeared every hour! Species have always died out and new ones have appeared, but the rate of extinction today is approximately a hundred times greater than the natural rate.
