Air Pollution Essay

The Sources and Affects of Air Pollution (topic): Air pollution is the contamination of the air by noxious gases and small particles of solid and liquid matter in amounts that can cause harm to living organisms. Sources of air pollution include: transportation engines such as automobiles, power and heat generation, industrial processes, and the burning of solid waste. The combustion of gasoline and other fuels in automobiles, trucks, and jet airplanes produce the most common pollutants, nitrogen oxides, gaseous hydrocarbons, and carbon monoxide, as well as particles of matter like lead. When nitrogen oxides combine with hydrocarbons they form other types of pollutants, like ozone, peroxyacetylnitrate which stings the eyes, and nitrogen dioxide which forms when nitrogen oxides react with oxygen. In cities where transportation is the major cause of pollution, nitrogen dioxide colors the sky brown, because the nitrogen dioxide has combined with other forms of pollution and water vapor to produce smog. In cities, air is may not only be polluted by transportation but also by the burning of fossil fuels in industrial buildings and by the incineration of garbage, these types of combustion pollute the air with large amounts of sulfur oxides that cause damage to manmade structures and kill plants.

Air pollution has affects the environment and the health of people in a negative manor. Sulfur oxides raises the incidence of respiratory diseases in people, and it also creates a form of rain that contains high levels of sulfuric or nitric acids that pollute drinking water, vegetation, destroy aquatic life and erode man-made structures. Air pollution may also possibly harm urban populations in ways too subtle or slow for us to recognize. The subtle effects of air pollution necessitates research in order to assess the possible long-term effects of constant exposure to low levels of pollution as well as determine how air pollutants interact with each other and other substances within the human body. Air pollution is also causing the increasing damage to the ozone layer above Antarctica, as well as contributing to the depletion of ozone in the planets atmosphere. The depletion of ozone will cause the amount of ultraviolet radiation that reaches the earth will increase, which will burn crops and plants and endanger the lives of living organisms on the planet. This type of air pollution is caused mainly by CFCs, from refrigerators, air conditions and sprays. Due to the serious dangers air pollutions cause to the health of people, governments have recently implemented plans to reduce the amounts of pollution that enter the atmosphere. Governments hope to decrease pollution by setting new emission standards for new factories and extremely hazardous industrial pollutants. The government in the United States is beginning to regulate the amount of pollutants a plant is allowed to expel as well, as well as making sure they implement safety and cleaning procedures that will reduce the amount of needless pollution produced. Also steps are being taken to reduce pollution, ideally the use of fossil fuels would have to be eliminated in order to achieve a complete stop to the production of air pollutants, some countries have initiated studies into alternative sources of energy and different types of transportation engines but these have yet to be implemented.

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