What Caused The Fall Of The Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was considered to be one of the most powerful empires ever. But as the empire grew larger, it fell apart. Since it is impossible to say that only one issue caused the destruction of the empire, many of the theories are interconnected. Some of the issues that the Romans had back then can be applied to the United States today. An issue that was prevalent in the fall of Rome and an issue that is prevalent now in America are public health and environmental concerns. There were many issues with public health in ancient Rome. One of the major health problems was lead poisoning. At first, this wasn’t as big of a problem as it grew to be because most of the lead poisoning was from the lead pipes that carries water to houses.
One environmental problem was deforestation. Some reasons that the Romans cut down forests were because they needed the wood to make fires to keep themselves warm. In addition, they needed more farmland to grow the crops they needed for their growing empire so the cut down forests to make farms. They also cut down forests that they thought might hide their enemies that wanted to attack them. Lastly, they cut down forests to make homes. Similarly, the Romans also had air pollution. For example, the Romans did not know where to put all of the empire’s garbage and this caused the common people to just dump their garbage out the window. As a result, piles and piles of trash being on the streets and nobody removed it (Concrete, Fresh Water, and Trash). Not only is this disgusting, it is also very unsanitary. Moreover, while Rome did have a sewage system that got rid of all the dirty water, it often got flooded and contaminated the clean water. With the sewer water mixing with the clean water from the aqueducts and then that dirty water being contaminated by lead, the water was not safe to drink. And as explained by the prior paragraph, people got sick and that caused others to get sick (Edward
For instance, just like the Romans we don’t have a good way of getting rid of our garbage. Instead of throwing it out of our windows, we put it all in a smelly dump where the garbage contaminates the air. Furthermore, just like the Romans had health issues so do we but to a lesser extent. While many people in this country can and do have health care so that they can go to the doctor when they are sick, some cannot afford the price so they do not have health care. And when some of them get really sick, they go to the emergency room. And when some of them are done meeting with the doctor, they leave without paying. But since the doctors and nurses still have to get paid, the taxpayers have to give the government more money to pay them. And this makes the taxpayers unhappy. But at least we don’t have the gladiator games like they did in Rome. Finally, we also cut down trees. We cut down trees because tree loggers make money by cutting down the trees and then selling the land to more often than not build more homes. But when you cut down forests, you force the inhabitants to move and when they move, the creatures living there either have to move or die because there are now fewer resources for them. In conclusion, although the issues that ancient Rome had are different than