Modern society is becoming overwhelmed with great amounts of pollution from cars, factories, and an overabundance of garbage. The immense amounts of sulphur dioxide emitted into the air causes high levels of acid in the atmosphere. When this sulphuric acid is absorbed into moisture in the air, poignant rainfalls can be damaging to the external environment. Acid rain is a serious problem with disastrous effects. Each day this serious problem increases. Many people believe that this issue is too small to deal with right now, but this issue should be met head on and solved before it is too late.
Acid rain is defined as any rainfall that has an acidity level beyond what is expected in non-polluted rainfall. Any precipitation that has a pH value of less than 5.6 is considered to be acid precipitation.
One of the main causes of acid rain is sulfur dioxide. Natural sources that emit this gas are volcanoes, sea spray, rotting vegetation, and plankton. However, the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, are largely to be blamed for approximately half of the emissions of this gas in the world.
Nitric oxide and nitric dioxide are also components of acid rain. Its sources are mainly from power stations and exhaust fumes. Like sulfur dioxide, these nitrogen oxides rise into the atmosphere and are oxidized in clouds to form nitric acid.
Acid rain has drastic effects on our environment. It causes lakes and rivers to become acidic, killing off fish. Short-term increases in acid levels kill lots of fish, but the greatest threat is from long-term increases, which stop the fish reproducing. Plants and algae in lakes also suffer from increased acid levels. When the pH gets down to 4.5, virtually everything is dead.
How does acid rain affect humans? Among one of the serious side effects of acid pollution on humans are respiratory problems. The SO2 and NO2 emissions give rise to respiratory problems such as asthma, dry coughs, headaches, eye, nose, and throat irritations.
The best approach to acid rain is to reduce the amount of Nitrogen Oxides and Sulfur dioxides being released into the atmosphere. Fitting a catalytic converter to a car can reduce the emissions of nitrogen oxides by up to 90 percent, but they are very expensive, and cause more carbon dioxide to be released, which contributes to the greenhouse effect.
Sulfur Dioxide emissions from power stations can be reduced before, during, or after combustion.
Most of the acid rain pollution in our area comes from traffic, the creation of power, and manufacturing. Sometimes, fumes from manufacturing and power plants are created in the west and are blown eastward because
This silent killer is destroying these beautiful lakes and their surrounding watersheds. Acid rain has an adverse effect on the lakes, and their surrounding watersheds, of the Adirondacks in New York State.Acid rain is defined as chemically polluted rainfall. It's causes are: coal burning plants, industrial factories, smelters, and car emissions. It's formed by water molecules combining with the sulfur dioxide emitted by the burning of coal and with nitrogen oxide from auto emissions.
Acid rain has been proven to have damage forests, fresh waters and soils, killing insect and aquatic life-forms. It also causes damage to buildings and impacts on human health. Many people do not know what acid rain actually is. Acid rain is any form of precipitation that is unusually acidic, low pH levels, higher than normal amounts of sulfuric and nitric acid, occurs naturally and from man made sources. Forms when gases react in the atmosphere with water, oxygen, and other chemicals (what is acid rain?). The only water that will not have some amount of acidity is pure water. Pure water has a pH of 7 which is neutral; regular, unpolluted rain water has a pH of around 5.6. The acidity in rain water comes from the presence of Carbon Dioxide, Nitrogen Oxide, and Sulfur Dioxide. CO2 reacts with water to form carbonic acid. Nitrogen and water react during lightning storms, forming Nitric Oxide. NO is then oxidized to form N02. The NO2 reacts with water to form nitric acid. Due to this, the pH is lowered to be slightly acidic (Acid Rain). Acid rain can occur naturally in the environment, but the problem occurs when human interaction is the cause of the acidic levels.
Acid gases are produced when fossil fuels like coal and oil are burned in power stations, factories and in our own homes. Acid rain is rain that has been made acidic by certain pollutants in the air. Most of these acid gases are blown into the sky, and when they mix with the clouds it can cause rain - or snow, sleet, fog, mist or hail - to become more acidic. Acid rain is rain that has been made acidic by certain pollutants in the air. Acid rain occurs when these gases react in the atmosphere with water, oxygen, and other chemicals to form various acidic compounds. The result is a mild solution of sulfuric acid and nitric acid. When sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are released from power plants and other sources, prevailing winds blow these
When a motor vehicle runs, it produces nitrogen oxide which then mixes with the sulfur dioxide from power plants and other places. Together the two gasses then interact with molecules in the atmosphere. This interaction makes the molecules acidic and from there either falls as a form of wet deposition or dry deposition. Every day when people get into their form of motorized transportation they all contribute to the creation of acid deposition. In another article written by the EPA they tell of the causes of acid rain. Before humans started pumping these gasses into the air the environment could handle the naturally acidic precipitation, but now the precipitation has become too acidic for nature to be able to counteract the acidity: “ Over time, these neutralizing materials can be washed away by acid rain. Damage to crops, trees, lakes, rivers, and animals can result.”(What Causes Acid Rain? 1) Acid rain can cause damage to many different objects, living, or nonliving acid rain can still
Formed high in the clouds where sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides combine with oxygen and water, acid rain has a devastating ability to kill off aquatic systems, vegetation, animals, etc. The definition of acid rain is the deposition of acidic components in rain, fog, snow, and sleet. Regular rain has a pH that is slightly acidic at 5.6, but what makes one worry are the places like Washington, D.C., which possesses rain readings of 4.2 to 4.4 on the pH scale. Acid rain is mainly composed of Sulfuric Oxide (SO2) and Nitrous Oxide, which are common air pollutants from big industries, 70% of which are electric utility plants. If one views the amount pH levels of various areas around the nation it is easy to see that there is a problem, especially when a 4.0 pH level can drive many fish to die.
There are different negative affects of acid deposition to different environments on the earth. In soils where a possible buffer of basic material isn’t as great, plant nutrients are often lost, the germination of seeds and the growth of young seedlings are hurt, and plants may become over-fertilized by nitrogen. The plants in this instance often experience reduction in growth rates, flowering ability, and overall yield. This makes the plants more vulnerable to disease, insects, drought, and frost. Trees are also affected by acid deposition.
Consequently, we have the debate of whether health care should be a right or a privilege. Reid mentions in his book, The Healing of America, that United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, Canada all have universal health care. He also adds that they have better health outcomes than the U.S. in addition to lower infant mortality rates (Reid, 2010, p. 31-34). The U.S.’s mindset views health care as a privilege. However, President Obama brought his liberal agenda to the table and proposed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) in 2010 (Teutsch & Rechel, 2012). It is projected that by the year 2019, the PPACA will transform healthcare as a right rather than a privilege (Teutsch & Rechel, 2012).
Acid rain has a harmful impact on the environment which is a serious environmental problem that affects large parts of the United States and Canada. Acid rain is particularly damaging to lakes, streams, forests and the plants and animals that live in these ecosystems. Acid rain is referring to a mixture of wet and dry deposition from the atmosphere containing higher than normal amounts of nitric and sulfuric acids. They are oxidized in the air until they are converted to sulfuric and nitric acids. These acids are then captured by raindrops which fall to the earth as acid precipitation. This process is called deposition. We know this as acid rain, but we can have acidic snow or hail and even acidic dust particles falling from the sky. It can occur in natural resources, such as volcanoes and decaying vegetation, and man-made sources, primarily of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides resulting from fossil fuel combustion.
Acid rain affects many things in our world greatly. Acid rain is precipitation that has been released into the atmosphere and is very harmful and can do lots of damage.
"Effects of Acid Rain - Human Health." Acid Rain . US EPA, 12 04 2012. Web. 11 Feb 2014. .
Acid rain is relevant in today’s society more than ever because ever since the Industrial Revolution we are burning fuel that contain nitrogen and sulphur compounds. Nature produces some nitrogen dioxide and some sulphur dioxide but that does not compare to how much power stations, motor vehicles and blast furnaces produce. The acid rain is killing off wildlife, corroding buildings and reacting with nutrients in the soil. The acid rain can get into our waterways and poison the water, we can also breathe it in and the acid would irritate our upper respiratory tract. Our environment is degrading and acid rain is a big catalyst.
Acid rain is a form of acid deposition, and there are many types of acid deposition. Deposition is the process in which a gas turns into a solid matter. Types of wet acid deposition, which involves gases turning into liquids, include acid rain, sleet, snow, fog, and haze. Forms of dry acid deposition include acid gas and dust. Scientists and others use a measure called pH to find the relative acidity of a liquid. If a liquid has a low pH level, it is
The three theories I have been exploring likewise do not have a perfect answer, but they do shed some light on the human condition. I do not think that humans are inherently good or evil. However, the three theories all have something radically different to say about human nature. Thinkers with a biological approach would argue that there is no good or evil, just nature (Gahtan, 2014). Freud postulated that humans are inherently evil and flawed. At our core, the Id, part of our unconscious mind seeks to extract as much pleasure from the world as possible. The ego and superego emerge as a response to keep the Id behaving in a rational and moral way. (Funder, 2012). Phenomenological thinkers, however, have generally more optimistic views than Freud. Maslow, for instance believed that people are inherently good. He thought that everyone sought to self-actualize, which is the pinnacle of perfection an individual can reach (Maslow, 1987). In contrast, humanistic and existentialist Sartre said that “This means that man first exists, occurs, arises in the world, and is only defined later” (Sartre, 1973). What Sartre is saying is that humans are created without good, evil, or a purpose. We emerge from nothingness. What I find so profound about this statement is that if a person chooses to be good, it means that they achieved the ability to be a good person
Nicola Tesla was one of the founding fathers and his research was seized by the FBI when he died (PBS). Various military operations have been executed to assess the practicality of weather modification as a military asset. Specifically operation Popeye involved cloud seeding during the Vietnam War to increase the length of the monsoon season as well as increase the rate of rainfall in an attempt to limit enemy mobility and communication