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Air pollution(encyclopedia)

Air Pollution


Air pollutants are substances that, when present in the atmosphere in sufficient quantities, may adversely affect people, animals, vegetation or inanimate materials. The sources of air pollution include industry, vehicles, domestic activities (eg, heating, cooking), agriculture (fertilizers, blowing dust, PESTICIDES, herbicides, farm odours), forestry (pesticides, forest fires) and natural events (VOLCANOES, dust storms, salt from forest fires, sea spray and pollen), and wetland emissions such as methane and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Water vapour released from the combustion of natural gas may cause ice FOG in winter in such northern cities as Edmonton, and thus might be considered a pollutant in those circumstances. Air pollutants occur in minute quantities, mostly measured in parts per million or parts per trillion parts of air. Some chemicals causing highly objectionable odours occur at such low concentrations that they cannot be measured.



Types of Pollutants


Pollutants include total suspended particulate matter (TSP), VOCs, sulphur dioxide (SO2), oxides of nitrogen (NO2 and NO), ozone (O3), carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen sulphide (H2S), hydrogen fluoride (HF1) and LEAD (Pb). Many of these result from the burning of fossil fuels (eg, coal, oil, gasoline). There are also a few highly toxic pollutants such as MERCURY and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Occupational and indoor pollutants include factory dust and cigarette smoke. Other pollutants of concern are the sulphate and nitrate fractions of TSP (see ACID RAIN), carbon dioxide (CO2), chlorofluoromethanes and ionizing radiation. Particles less than 10 microns in diameter are of special significance to human health as they penetrate into the lower respiratory track.


Air Pollution Pathways


The initial behaviour of a pollutant depends on the nature of its source, which may be a chimney releasing gases at high temperature and exit velocity, or the tail pipe of a moving vehicle. Subsequently, the pollutant moves with the wind and is diluted by wind eddies. In some cases chemical transformations into new forms of pollutants may take place, eg, SO2 may change to sulphate, while a brew of oxides of nitrogen, VOCs, sunlight and the right combination of meteorological conditions may produce oxidant smogs.
Pollution is often carried long distances by the wind but is finally removed by wet and dry deposition. In the case of substances like mercury that begin to vaporize at room temperature, there is concern about their northward drift towards the Arctic and their ultimate incorporation into food chains. Scientists have predicted that if all man-made pollution sources were turned off suddenly the atmosphere would return to a pristine state within a few days. Despite the atmosphere's seemingly limitless capacity to accept and dilute the waste products of society, meteorological conditions occasionally lead to serious air-pollution episodes, particularily in the Lower Fraser River Valley and in the Windsor-Toronto-Montréal-Québec City corridor.
For ground-level sources, these episodes are associated with light winds and temperature inversions (temperature increasing with height, a condition reducing wind gusts and pollutant dilution rates), which result in smog. For emissions from tall chimneys, pollution episodes are associated with strong, steady winds and also with fumigations (inversions aloft and vigorous mixing near the ground caused by surface heating). The most serious recorded air-pollution episode in Canada is the "Grey Cup smog" of November 1962, which lasted 5 days. It caused increased hospital admissions throughout southern Ontario and postponement of the football game in Toronto because of poor visibility. During the long arctic winter, spells of light winds and strong temperature inversions may cause air pollutants to accumulate after having moved into the region from more southern latitudes.


Effects of Air Pollutants


Adverse effects to human and animal health include respiratory ailments (silicosis, pneumonia, asthma, emphysema, bronchitis and hay fever) caused by particles (SO2, NO2, O3, pollens); carboxylhemoglobin, a condition that interferes with the ability of hemoglobin to combine with oxygen, resulting from carbon monoxide uptake by the bloodstream; eye watering and skin irritation caused by ozone; and damage to internal organs from lead, mercury, pesticides, etc. It is suspected that lung CANCER and other chronic diseases may be caused or exacerbated by air pollution.
Direct damage to vegetation includes necrosis (tissue death), chlorosis (whitening of leaves) and premature aging; indirect damage may result from soil acidification by acid rain. Metal corrosion, caused mainly by SO2 and sea spray, takes the form of increased rust and metal fatigue. Damage to fabrics, paint and rubber, caused mainly by NO2, O3 and H2S, results in shortened life span, discoloration, cracking and peeling. Soiling of materials caused by soot necessitates increased washing, dry cleaning and painting. Climatic effects of pollution can be regional and immediate (eg, ice fogs in Edmonton, large-scale regional hazes) or global and long-term. The main trace substances involved in global warming are water vapour, CO2, NO2, methane, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and sulphate particles.


Air Resource Management


Strategies used to control air pollution are varied. Emissions can be reduced by means of burning less or cleaner fuel (eg, natural gas instead of coal), more efficient burning of fuel (ie, at higher temperatures or with oxygen added) and installation of pollution-control devices. The use of tall chimneys, such as the "superstack" erected by Inco Ltd at Sudbury, Ontario, may solve local problems but tends to enlarge the affected area. Meteorological episode control involves reduction of emissions (eg, switching to low-sulphur fuels) when atmospheric dispersal is poor. Other strategies include regional land-use planning, tradeable discharge permits, development of pollutant-resistant strains of vegetation, and development of paints and metals, etc, with increased life expectancies in polluted environments. Emission control is of primary importance, but some sources may be technologically or economically difficult to manage. Most air-resource programs, therefore, use a combination of strategies.
Environment Canada has recently been concerned that control and policy actions designed to resolve one kind of air pollution issue may worsen another. For example, the use of electric cars would reduce ground-level air pollution in cities but would increase emissions from the tall chimneys of power stations, and problems would also occur with the disposal of lead batteries. Similarily, replacement gases for CFCs are available to reduce stratospheric OZONE DEPLETION but many of these are implicated in global warming.
Environment Canada has categorized 6 major air pollution issues: acidic deposition, global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, surface oxidant episodes, hazardous air pollutants and suspended particulate matter. Each of these issues is traditionally assessed by its own cluster of scientists, modellers, economists and policy analysts, with little interaction amongst the 6 clusters. This means that optimal strategies for dealing with a particular issue may not be optimal for the whole. To overcome this deficiency, a major effort is being directed towards the development of comprehensive frameworks for undertaking multi-issue assessments.


Pollution Control


Most Canadian provinces and the federal government have Clean Air Acts that specify emission standards (maximum permissible rates of release of designated pollutants from particular types of sources) and ambient air-quality standards (maximum permissible concentrations of designated pollutants in the outdoor environment). Under the Canadian Constitution, health is a provincial responsibility, with air-pollution control undertaken largely by the provinces. The federal government does have jurisdiction, however, over pollution from trains and ships, regulates lead content of gasoline, and can intervene when air pollution crosses the US-Canada border. The ATOMIC ENERGY CONTROL BOARD regulates ionizing radiation. The federal government also plays an important co-ordinating role, through federal-provincial committees and task forces, in setting standards, and monitoring criteria, research and engineering programs.
Indoor pollutants are regulated mostly by industrial hygiene authorities. Some cities broadcast smog alerts and pollution indices. The federal government issues ultraviolet radiation (UV) forecasts designed to warn against overexposure to full sunlight.

one question: what is this for?

This qusetion is for the poster remember.

oh...i didnt know that...

what was the website that you got the information from?

it was encyclopedia i wrote it beside my topic [/img]

and you actually spend a lot of time typing those together?

Good job Midhaat!

I am sorry but i did not do any research did i miss a meeting

yes umair. in fact, these data are useful for team B for green day.

tha tmeans u are gonna take my hard work u can do that david

ya i will

I got an article on smoking affecting our environment:
It is a common belief among cigarette smokers that they are only hurting themselves. In fact they are not only hurting themselves, but also the people who love them and the environment. As an ex-smoker I was curious about the environmental impact of smoking so I decided to investigate. These days everyone knows what smoking cigarettes does to our bodies, but the knowledge of what smoking does to the Earth is not as common. There are some things that every smoker who has any concern for environmental issues should know.

It is fairly obvious that smoking pollutes the air and quite often the ground. However, it is not always obvious how or how much smoking pollutes. Cigarettes contain over 4000 chemicals which are exhaled and released into the air and the atmosphere. Approximately 30% of North Americans are smokers, and the percentage goes much higher in developing countries, which means there is a massive amount of pollution being released into the air every day. Trees are often compared to the lungs in our bodies because they perform basically the same functions as our lungs do on a global scale. With all of the pollutants that the trees filter out for us already it seems almost crazy to add more to the air that doesn’t need to be added. We need to breathe, but no one needs to smoke.

The pollution caused by cigarettes does not stop in our bodies or the air; it also affects the land we live on and the water that we drink. Millions of cigarette butts are discarded onto the ground every day. Every year in California the state has a statewide cleanup and cigarette butts account for almost half of the waste that is collected. These are only the ones that are picked up in one state and millions more are never picked up. They end up in the rivers and lakes where fish and animals eat them by mistake and quite often die from it. The rest are left on the ground to decompose which will take an average of 25 years while all of the chemicals and additives leach into the ground and pollute the soil and the plants. If you are going to smoke please consider this information before your throw your cigarette butts on the ground. It looks unattractive, it is a major fire hazard in dry weather, and it is extremely harmful to the environment.

Probably the most impacting aspect of cigarettes is actually producing them. There is the land used to grow the crops all over the world that could be put to better use by planting more trees or food for starving children in third world countries. These crops are also often sprayed with a lot of harmful pesticides and chemicals because tobacco is a very fragile plant and is likely to pick up disease. It also takes a lot of trees to produce and package cigarettes. Cigarette manufacturing uses four miles of paper an hour just for rolling and packaging cigarettes. One tree is wasted for every three hundred cigarettes produced. Those trees could be filtering out the pollutants already in the air instead of being chopped down for the cause of adding new ones. There is still the energy and water wasted in manufacturing cigarettes that needs to be considered and with soil depletion and chemical wastage added on top of that it becomes clear that manufacturing cigarettes has an enormous strain on the environment.

The tobacco industry is quite unwilling to use better technology to reduce the impact they are having on the environment because it would take up too much of their billions of dollars in profit every year. They are often trying to have more trees planted, but since they use trees to dry the tobacco and for rolling and packaging it is probably not concern for the environment, but concern for losing their wood sources that encourage them to do this. They do not care about polluting our bodies so it seems unlikely that they would think twice about polluting our environment. The only way to stop them from harming the environment is to stop buying their products. Quitting smoking is hard, but it can be done and it’s not only about the harm smokers are doing to their own bodies, it’s also about the harm they are doing to the earth and the pain that they are causing their friends and families.

We found two help programs that might help you kick the habbit, there is a small investment but with it you'll be able to kick the habit and save lots of money each year. According to educationworld.com an average smoker spends over $700 a year on cigarettes... that's a vacation each year to somewhere warm during the winter Here are the two programs we found:
Quit Smoking Today - The Quit Smoking Today program is without doubt the easiest way available to kick those evil cancer sticks out of your life for good. It eradicates the usual problems that are associated with quitting smoking such as cravings, short temper, hunger and weight gain. Quit Smoking Today is so successful because it overcomes your desire to light up.
Easy Quit System - The EasyQuit System is probably the simplest method available to overcome all the problems normally associated with quitting smoking - cravings, weight gain, anxiety, short-temper, hunger and discomfort. The incredible success of the EasyQuit System is because it is so effective at overcoming your desire to smoke

got it from:http://www.aboutmyplanet.com/environment/smoking-affects/

where did you get all this? like on google, it gave me so much junk that doesnt even make any sense!

he's good at this stuff.

That's why i say if u need me to do research i good at that.

ok, then can u do more research?

anymore research, midhaat?

i guess that i think we will be needing all this information for the eco announcements

that will do...

ok, I will try to use this info and come up with announcements, WITH MISS JASWALS APPROVEL start announcing facts

i think the eco announcements are done...

ok...theres no more eco announcements ok?

FINE

topic locked

forum topic will remain here as the information can be used later