Urban Environmental Science A human being breathes 16 times a minute, 960 times an hour, almost 8.5 million times a year. With each breath, he or she inhales hundreds of airborne substances. The nature of these substances is partially formed by the human activity. For those who live in cities, many of those substances are pollutants that increases the risk of respiratory problems and cancer. Smog reduces lung capacity and decreases the body’s ability to fight infection. Soot causes bronchitis, chronic lung disease and irritation of the eyes and throat, causing serious deseases like cancer.
Even people who don’t experience severe health problems from air pollution, suffer in some other ways. air pollution does not only added health problems connected with lungs, but also causes nasal congestion and breathing difficulty. and can even prolong the common cold. Federal regulations were designed to solve problems with air pollution and other environmental issues. Everybody has to be protacted from pollutants. Regardless of many limitations for pollution producers, urban people are still breathing bad air. Why does that happen? The answer is found to be complex. This qustion involves everything from regulatory shortcomings to consumer culture. This no doubt that industrial emissions are responsible for the bigger part of air pollution.
Coal-burning electric power plants account for 57 percent of the industrial pollution in the U.S, and this percent is constantly increases. In 1997, EPA drafted new NAAQS for two of the most harmful and persistent criteria pollutants: soot and smog. Soot was limited to 10 microns, but the new rules sought to control even finer particles, those at least 2.5 microns across. Allowable levels of smog were reduced from 0.12 parts per million (ppm) to 0.08 ppm. To understand the air pollution problem, we have to consider the overall picture besides industrial air poluters In a typical U.S. city, automobile exhaust accounts for up to 60 percent of the nitrogen oxide and up to 90 percent of the carbon monoxide in the air. Cars and light trucks are responsible for about 20 percent of carbon dioxide emissions.
The Term Paper on Air Pollution 16
Air pollution is one of the most serious problems in the world. It refers to the contamination of the atmosphere by harmful chemicals or biological materials. According to the World’s Worst Polluted Places by Blacksmith Institute in 2008, two of the worst pollution problems in the world are urban air quality and indoor air pollution. To solve the problem of air pollution, it’s ...
They appear to be the biggest contributors to global warming. As the result of air pollution, 75 percent of 1,000 lakes, that were included in recent servey, were affected by acid rain. Electric utility plants powered by coal or oil account for about 70 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions and 30 percent of nitrogen oxide emissions in the United States each year. When car and truck exhaust is added in, over 20 million tons of [SO.sub.2] and NOx are emitted into the atmosphere annually. Pollution from diesel engines contributes about 80% of the added cancer risk from toxic air pollution nationwide. But some changes are coming.
The Air Pollution Program, passed as part of the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act, will offer some relief when it will be fully implemented in 2010. The Clean Air Act was also enacted to protect human health with “an adequate margin of safety”. A new rule proposed by the EPA on April 15, 2003, would dramatically cut pollution from nonroad vehicles, setting strict standards similar to those set to take effect in 2006 for on-road vehicles. According to the Office of Technology Assessment, compliance expenditures for all environmental regulations combined amount to 1.5 percent of the U.S. gross national product. Over the past 30 years, environmental rules have forced the development of new, cleaner technologies. In 1994, four years after Congress passed the Clean Air Act amendments, fuel companies admitted: We opposed some of that legislation, because we thought it might be too costly for the consumer.
The Essay on Air Pollution 21
Air Pollution Before dealing with air pollution, a basic definition of pollution must first be made. Pollution has its origins in the Latin word polluere, which means contamination of any feature of the environment (http://hk.geocities.com/xavier114fch/01/01-conten t.htm). Photochemical smog, emissions, chemicals, etc. are all instances of pollutants and most all of them donate to the air ...
In retrospect, we were wrong. Air quality is improving, at a cost acceptable to the motoring public. Federal support for renewable energy. The wind, solar and geothermal are just a few of the alternatives to fossil fuel-derived power. Not only is renewable energy better for the environment and for the economy, too: Investment in renewable energy creates about five times as many jobs as investments in fossil fuel or nuclear power. And according to a study by Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, the cleanest plants also make the wisest investments.
Bibliography: April Reese. Bad Air Days. Environment Science. Air Pollution in the USA, 2001, September: 79-98..
