Air Pollution Air Pollution is addition of harmful substances to the atmosphere resulting in damage to the environment, human health, and quality of life. One of many forms of pollution, air pollution occurs inside homes, schools, and offices; in cities; across continents; and even globally. Air pollution makes people sick, it causes breathing problems and promotes cancer, and it harms plants, animals, and the ecosystems in which they live. Some air pollutants return to earth in the form of acid rain and snow, which corrode statues and buildings, damage crops and forests, and make lakes and streams unsuitable for fish and other plant and animal life.
Pollution is changing the earth’s atmosphere so that it lets in more harmful radiation from the sun. At the same time, our polluted atmosphere is becoming a better insulator, preventing heat from escaping back into space and leading to a rise in global average temperatures. Scientists predict that the temperature increase, referred to as global warming, will affect world food supply, alter sea level, make weather more extreme, and increase the spread of tropical disease. Most air pollution comes from one human activity: burning fossil fuels, natural gas, coal, and oil to power industrial processes and motor vehicles.
Among the harmful chemical compounds this burning puts into the atmosphere are carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and tiny solid particles including lead from gasoline additives called particulates. Between 1900 and 1970, motor vehicle use rapidly expanded, and emissions of nitrogen oxides, some of the most damaging pollutants in vehicle exhaust, increased 690 percent. When fuels are incompletely burned, various chemicals called volatile organic chemicals also enter the air. Pollutants also come from other sources. For instance, decomposing garbage in landfills and solid waste disposal sites emits methane gas, and many household products give off Volatile organic chemicals.
Some of these pollutants also come from natural sources. For example, forest fires emit particulates and Volatile organic chemicals into the atmosphere. Ultrafine dust particles, dislodged by soil erosion when water and weather loosen layers of soil, increase airborne particulate levels. Volcanoes spew out sulfur dioxide and large amounts of pulverized lava rock known as volcanic ash. A big volcanic eruption can darken the sky over a wide region and affect the earth’s entire atmosphere. The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatoubo in the Philippines, for example, dumped enough volcanic ash into the upper atmosphere to lower global temperatures for the next two years.
Unlike pollutants from human activity, however, naturally occurring pollutants tend to remain in the atmosphere for a short time and do not lead to permanent atmospheric change. Once in the atmosphere, pollutants often undergo chemical reactions that produce additional harmful compounds. Air pollution is subject to weather patterns that can trap it in valleys or blow it across the globe to damage pristine environments far from the original sources. Local and regional pollution take place in the lowest layer of the atmosphere, the troposphere, which extends from the earth’s surface to about ten miles . The troposphere is the region in which most weather occurs.
If the load of pollutants added to the troposphere were equally distributed, the pollutants would be spread over vast areas and the air pollution might almost escape our notice. Pollution sources tend to be concentrated, however, especially in cities. In the weather phenomenon known as thermal inversion, a layer of cooler air is trapped near the ground by a layer of warmer air above. When this occurs, normal air mixing almost ceases and pollutants are trapped in the lower layer.
Local topography, or the shape of the land, can worsen this effect, an area ringed by mountains, for example, can become a pollution trap. Smog is intense local pollution usually trapped by a thermal inversion. Before the age of the automobile, most smog came from burning coal and was so severe that in 19th-century London, street lights were turned on by noon because soot and smog darkened the midday sky. Burning gasoline in motor vehicles is the main source of smog in most regions today. Powered by sunlight, oxides of nitrogen and volatile organic compounds react in the atmosphere to produce photochemical smog. Smog contains ozone, a form of oxygen gas made up of molecules with three oxygen atoms rather than the normal two.
Ozone in the lower atmosphere is a poison; it damages vegetation, kills trees, irritates lung tissues, and attacks rubber. Environmental officials measure ozone to determine the severity of smog. When the ozone level is high, other pollutants, including carbon monoxide, are usually present at high levels as well. In the presence of atmospheric moisture, sulfur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen turn into droplets of pure acid floating in smog. These airborne acids are bad for the lungs and attack anything made of limestone, marble, or metal.
In cities around the world, smog acids are eroding precious artifacts, including the Parthenon temple in Athens, Greece, and the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. Oxides of nitrogen and sulfur dioxide pollute places far from the points where they are released into the air. Carried by winds in the troposphere, they can reach distant regions where they descend in acid form, usually as rain or snow. Such acid precipitation can burn the leaves of plants and make lakes too acidic to support fish and other living things. Because of acidification, sensitive species such as the popular brook trout can no longer survive in many lakes and streams in the eastern United States. Smog spoils views and makes outdoor activity unpleasant.
For the very young, the very old, and people who suffer from asthma or heart disease, the effects of smog are even worse: It may cause headaches or dizziness and can cause breathing difficulties. In extreme cases, smog can lead to mass illness and death, mainly from carbon monoxide poisoning. In 1948 in the steel-mill town of Donora, Pennsylvania, intense local smog killed nineteen people. In 1952 in London over 3000 people died in one of the notorious smog events known as London Fogs; in 1962 another 700 Londoners died. With stronger pollution controls and less reliance on coal for heat, today’s chronic smog is rarely so obviously deadly. However, under adverse weather conditions, accidental releases of toxic substances can be equally disastrous.
The worst such accident occurred in 1984 in Bhopal, India, when methyl isocyanate released from an American-owned factory during a thermal inversion caused at least 3300 deaths. Air pollution can expand beyond a regional area to cause global effects. The stratosphere is the layer of the atmosphere between ten miles and thirty miles above sea level. It is rich in ozone, the same molecule that acts as a pollutant when found at lower levels of the atmosphere in urban smog. Up at the stratospheric level, however, ozone forms a protective layer that serves a vital function: it absorbs the wavelength of solar radiation known as ultraviolet-B (UV-B).
UV-B damages deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the genetic molecule found in every living cell, increasing the risk of such problems as cancer in humans. Because of its protective function, the ozone layer is essential to life on earth. Several pollutants attack the ozone layer. Chief among them is the class of chemicals known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used as refrigerants (notably in air conditioners), as agents in several manufacturing processes, and formerly as propellants in spray cans. CFC molecules are virtually indestructible until they reach the stratosphere. Here, intense ultraviolet radiation breaks the CFC molecules apart, releasing the chlorine atoms they contain.
These chlorine atoms begin reacting with ozone, breaking it down into ordinary oxygen molecules that do not absorb UV-B. The chlorine acts as a catalyst that is, it takes part in several chemical reactions, yet at the end emerges unchanged and able to react again. A single chlorine atom can destroy up to 100,000 ozone molecules in the stratosphere. Other pollutants, including nitrous oxide from fertilizers and the pesticide methyl bromide, also attack atmospheric ozone. Scientists are finding that under this assault the protective ozone layer in the stratosphere is thinning. In the Antarctic region, it vanishes almost entirely for a few weeks every year.
Although CFC use has been greatly reduced in recent years, CFC molecules already released into the lower atmosphere will be making their way to the stratosphere for decades, and further ozone loss is expected. As a result, experts anticipate an increase in skin cancers, more cataracts (clouding of the lens of the eye), and reduced yields of some food crops. Humans are bringing about another global-scale change in the atmosphere: the increase in what are called greenhouse gases. Like glass in a greenhouse, these gases admit the sun’s light but tend to reflect back downward the heat that is radiated from the ground below, trapping heat in the earth’s atmosphere.
This process is known as the greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide is the most significant of these gases; there is 25 percent more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today than there was a century ago, the result of our burning coal and fuels derived from oil. Methane, nitrous oxide, and CFCs are greenhouse gases as well. Scientists predict that increases in these gases in the atmosphere will make the earth a warmer place.
They expect a global rise in average temperature somewhere between 1.0 and 3.5 C (1.8 and 6.3 F) in the next century. Average temperat …
