People Without Plants Biology When a Person

¶ … People without Plants

Biology

When a person goes into the rainforest or the ocean, that person can readily notice that the rainforest and the ocean are teeming with life. An observer of these places will also notice how every form of life works together to sustain the environment. Though human beings build artificial environments such as cities, humans are a part of the ecosystem on Earth, and they participate in this co-dependency on other forms of life to survive as well as to sustain the environment. A form of life that humans are dependent on are plants. Without plants, human beings would have no air to breathe and their respiratory systems would fail. There would exist no human civilizations without oxygen. Perhaps there would be other forms of life in the place of humanity that breathed another gas, but humanity would not exist as we know it today were it not for the existence of plants.

Plants are structured or designed to intake carbon dioxide, what humans exhale, and by a process known as photosynthesis, expel oxygen, which humans inhale. The process begins with the absorption of sunlight through the leaf cuticle. The light encounter mesophyll and chloloplasts. Molecules absorb chlorophyll, gaining excitation energy, synthesizing carbohydrates, and eventually producing organic molecules into the atmosphere, such as oxygen. The plants use carbon dioxide and convert it into sugars. All forms of life and processes such as photosynthesis are dependent on the sun. The sun is responsible for all life on Earth, as well as for wind, the planet's magnetic field, gravity, and rotation. Plants take the energy gathered from sunlight and by the process of photosynthesis, produce a gas that is critical to human survival. The act of breathing in humans produces a gas that is critical to plant survival. In this way, it is clear that the codependence of plants and humans to live exists on a very basic level. There are many ways in which plants enrich the life of human beings, yet it begins on a fundamental level that plants and humans depend on each other for the breath of life.

The uses for plants in human life are old and are numerous. For many centuries, cultures around the world have used plants as medicines. In fact, many modern medicines are directly derived from plants, and some medicines, even pharmaceuticals have plant ingredients. Raskin et al. agree as they write:

"For centuries people have used plants for healing. Plant products -- as part of foods or botanical potions and powders -- have been used with varying success to cure and prevent diseases throughout history. Written records of medicinal plants date back at least 5000 years to the Sumerians, and archeological records suggest even earlier use of medicinal plants." (Raskin et al., 2002,-Page 522)

Humans depend on plants for breath. Humans depend on plants for food and for medicine. There exists concrete evidence to support these claims. Plants give humans life, and from the above quotation, we see that plants also sustain human life. Humans can use plants to make their lives last longer by helping their bodies' function improve. Plants are certainly a part of the human environment. Plants can also maintain the health of the environment. Pimental et al. explain: "For instance, some plants and microbes help to degrade chemical pollutants and organic wastes and recycle nutrients throughout the ecosystem." (Pimental et al., 1997,-Page 747) Plants can even help alleviate the effects of human manufacturing.