Thursday, May 17, 2007
Preventing air pollution
There are many ways to prevent air pollution. Here are some of the ways listed:
Try alternate modes of transport like cycling, walking, taking public transport. This will ensure that there is lesser pollution though it may not be as convenient as driving a car. As half of the air pollution comes from vehicles, this will help cut down on the amount of pollution.
Not only should you drive less, you should also drive smart. Accelerate gradually, use cruise control on the highway, not breaking the speed limit, combine your errands into one trip, keep your tires properly inflated, and replace your car’s air filters occasionally.
You should also choose user friendly products, those which contain either very little or no CFCs and harmful gases at all. You should select products that are water-based or have low amounts of volatile organic compounds, and store solvents in air tight containers. Even indirect ways like cutting down the usage of paper can help as less forests are cut down and therefore promoting photosynthesis balancing the carbon dioxide in the air and the trees are "lungs" of the Mother Earth so if they are reduced what would there be to reduce carbon dioxide which is produced by respiration of living beings and the extra from burning of fossil fuels.
You should also save energy. By turning off the lights when you leave a room, replacing incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent ones, installing low flow showerheads, hanging your clothes on a clothesline, cook small meals in a microwave oven, insulating your water heater, using a fan at night instead of using the air-conditioner, you will save huge amounts of energy, thus conserving electricity, therefore lesser fuels are needed to be burnt, leading to lesser air pollution.
By doing what you can to reduce air pollution, it will make a difference. We can't stop industries from burning fossil fuels, cars producing thick fumes, forest fires causing haze, or the production of carbon dioxide. But by using your civic influence, you can reduce regional and national pollution standards, we are not so helpless and we can DEFINITELY help out. There are many many ways to do it, we have suggested some ways, remember this issue concerns everyone, and we should not ignore it completely. That is the worse thing you can do. Do your part, reduce and stop air pollution from becoming worse. The future is in your hands, deal or no deal?
Zipit
12:03 PM
Air pollution can affect our health in many ways with both short-term and long-term effects. Different groups of individuals are affected by air pollution in different ways. Some individuals are much more sensitive to pollutants than are others. Young children and elderly people often suffer more from the effects of air pollution. People with health problems such as asthma, heart and lung disease may also suffer more when the air is polluted. The extent to which an individual is harmed by air pollution usually depends on the total exposure to the damaging chemicals, i.e., the duration of exposure and the concentration of the chemicals must be taken into account.
Examples of short-term effects include irritation to the eyes, nose and throat, and upper respiratory infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia. Other symptoms can include headaches, nausea, and allergic reactions. Short-term air pollution can aggravate the medical conditions of individuals with asthma and emphysema. In the great "Smog Disaster" in London in 1952, four thousand people died in a few days due to the high concentrations of pollution.
Long-term health effects can include chronic respiratory disease, lung cancer, heart disease, and even damage to the brain, nerves, liver, or kidneys. Continual exposure to air pollution affects the lungs of growing children and may aggravate or complicate medical conditions in the elderly. It is estimated that half a million people die prematurely every year in the United States as a result of smoking cigarettes.
Not only does Air Pollution affect our health, it also affects many other things like buildings and the environment. If you thought that was bad enough, read this.
How Air Pollution Affects Buildings
Contemporary air pollutants have the potential to degrade organic coatings and polymers, which are of great importance to modern structures, while increasing amounts of fine diesel soot spoil the simple lines and smooth areas characteristic of many modern buildings
For a reference on how many people have died and how many tones of CO2 has been emitted, go to www.breathingearth.net to find out more.
Also, if the ozone layer does thinner even more in the future, the ozone hole will become even bigger and the ozone will thinner leading to more UV penetrating our Earth and cause even more harmful radiation which can be disastrous and deadly but silent. It may cause cancers, especially skin, as our skin is exposed to the sunlight which has UV rays the most.
For the greenhouse effects, the results are potentially hazardous and consequences are dire. We will suffer if we don't do something. It is been proven as the temperature becomes warmer, the ice caps receive the most heat and they melt and causing floods in low lying areas and submerging many, many islands. Many people will have to find a new home and similarly for people who live the near rivers, the ice caps on mountain tops will melt quickly and every year we have lesser water supply as the ice has melted off faster then it should be and causing arable land to reduce. Also, heat transfer around the world will be imbalanced, especially when it hits summer heat waves can kill and in winter if the weather is so warm it may fall rain, not snow.
Overall, this is a indirect effect but slowly we can feel it as the climate gets hotter and we need to do something fast and everyone should help out. We can stop these disastrous things from happening if we all as one people help out altogether. In the next topic, we are going to sum up what you can do about all this before it gets really messy.
Zipit
11:54 AM
The Sources of air pollution branch out into 2 main branches.
Anthropogenic sources (human activity):
-Combustion-fired power plants
-Controlled burn practices used in agriculture and forestry management
-Motor vehicles generating air pollution emissions.
-Marine vessels, such as container ships or cruise ships, and related port air emissions
-Burning fossil fuels
-Burning wood, fireplaces, stoves, furnaces and incinerators
Other anthropogenic sources:
-chemical, dust and crop waste burning in farming
-waste deposition in landfill, which gives out methane
-military uses such as nuclear weapons and toxic gases
Natural Sources:
-Dust from natural sources, usually large areas of land with little or no vegetation.
-Methane, emitted by the digestion of food by animals, for example cattle.
-Pine trees, which emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
-Radon gas from radioactive decay within the Earth's crust.
-Smoke and carbon monoxide from wildfires.
-Volcanic activities which produce sulphur, chlorine and ash particulates
Since there are so many causes of air pollution, what can we do to prevent our world from being engulfed in a ball of smoke and ash?
Zipit
11:42 AM
When we are talking about Air Pollution, it means that the air or the atmosphere all around us is polluted by pollutants making it dangerous and unsafe.
Primary pollutants produced by human activity include:
• Oxides of sulfur, nitrogen and carbon
• Organic compounds, such as hydrocarbons (fuel vapors and solvents)
• Particulate matter, such as smoke and dust
• Metal oxides, especially those of lead, cadmium, copper and iron
• Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
• Hazardous air pollutants (HAP)
• Persistent organic pollutants (POPs)
• Odors
From the 1900s onwards, there has been rapid industrialization in many countries and these industrial burn fossil fuels which contribute mainly to the gas carbon dioxide (CO²), which is colorless, odorless and not a harmful gas but when it travels up the atmosphere it is a greenhouse gas and can trap heat in Earth by converting the light energy of the sun to infrared-red rays that warm up the earth. This is called the greenhouse effect; it protects us from too harsh weather as heat can be trapped but an overdose would do harm to us. Similarly, as population increases rapidly, more agriculture is grown to feed the people and also for income in many countries. The animals they rear like cows produce methane (CH4) when they belch and it is also a greenhouse gas contributing even more to the greenhouse effect.
And as technology advances, people burn even more types of fuel like nitrogen and sulphur which lead to their oxides. These element-based fuels can provide a greater amount of energy then carbon even though not use as commonly as it. They (the oxides) are poisonous in nature but they can also be produced naturally in small amounts. For example, a volcano eruption would cause great amounts of sulphur to react to oxides and in lightning nitrogen reacts to form oxides also. These type of gases can react with water to form acids and when they mix with the water vapor above, they would acidity it and disrupt the ecosystem as acids have acidic properties that will do harm to the living beings on Earth. Many animals cannot live in an environment with a pH too low like fishes in ponds and when the acid rain falls into water sources many fishes and plants may die disrupting the ecosystem as many other animals rely on them and also affecting them. Acids also can wear off metals and so buildings can be corroded and destroyed as a result and a lot of money can be lost as a result.
CFCs did a great harm in the air pollution, from the 1970s or so, aerosol spray cans and Styrofoam packaging product contained a molecule chlorofluorocarbons which has more then one type but it is usually made up of chlorine, fluorine and carbon. The molecule can drift up high as high as the stratosphere and when it reaches there the highly chlorine will break up from the molecule and start to dismember the ozone molecules as they are pretty unstable and they are converted in oxygen molecule so it reduces the amount of ozone in the atmosphere therfore reducing our protection aganist UV rays which are harmful and cancerous the living beings as ozone has the ability to absorb the radiation and CFCs can do their destruction for a very long time as they are non-biodegradable. Although production of CFCs have stopped and the ozone layer is recovering, this has indeed taught us about the lessons of air pollution
There are many many more real theories for air pollution like the ones listed above and we have shown you how it is happening so rapidly and how it happened. So after we know all about it, the next question is, how are we going to stop it?
Zipit
11:38 AM
The question on everyone lips: What Is Pollution? Pollution is the introduction of substances or energy into the environment, resulting in deleterious effects of such a nature as to endanger human health, harm living resources and ecosystems, and impair or interfere with amenities and other legitimate uses of the environment. It is usually unwanted but created as a result of many reasons and it dirties or makes the air we breathe in impure. It is actually damaging the natural environment through different means that cannot be seen directly but can be felt sooner or indirectly; examples include global warming, ozone depletion, acid rain etc. It is a rising problem in our current environment and we have taken the extra step to set up this blog, which is devoted to explaining and encouraging people how not to pollute and educate readers on air pollution. This blog focuses on Air Pollution and our aim is to convey the messages about it. We strongly encourage readers to read on and thus have a deeper understanding on this topic. There are different types of Air Pollution and different ways to counter these. After all, prevention is better then cure, so lets all help out. In the next post, we shall elaborate on this point.
Zipit
11:22 AM
