ESS topic 6
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An example of a secondary pollutant. It is formed when oxygen molecules react with oxygen atoms that are released from nitroxen dioxide, in the presence of sunlight.
This pollutant is highly reactive and damages plants, irritates eyes, and creates respiratory illnesses. Tropospheric ozone is the main pollutant in smog.
Air pollution by a mixture of smoke and fog, mainly consisting of tropospheric ozone. Often present in large cities like London and Beijing.
The frequency and severity of smog depends on climate, population density, fossil fuel use, and it can be caused by deforestation and burning as well.
- Altering human activity to consume less fossil fuels. E.g. purchasing energy-efficient technologies, using public transportation or walking and cycling.
- Regulating and reducing the release of pollutant. E.g. taxing air plane tickets or having governmental regulations.
- Preventing emissions by e.g. using catalytic converters on car exhausts to clearn primary pollutants.
- Regulating fuel quality which is done by governments.
- Clean-up strategies, like reforestation and re-greening.
- Decrease in tourism.
- The cost of clean-up strategies.
- Decreased worker productivity.
- Decreased crop productivity.
- The costs of healthcare.
- The costs of replacing materials.
- Impoversihed species structure.
- Visibility several times greater than normal.
- White moss spreading across the bottom of the lake.
- Increased levels of dissolved metals like copper, zinc, and aluminium. The metals more available to animals in that state.
- There are studies showing that high levels of aluminium in water can cause Alzheimer's disease for humans.
- People can also be seriously affected by digesting fish that have accumalted high levels of mercury.
- Increasing acidity leads to falling numbers of fungi, bacteria, and earthworms.
- Acidification is largely due to human activity (surprise, surprise).
- Many countries produce pollutants, but then deposit them far away from their point of origin.
- A lot of countries in Europe, including the Southern half of Sweden and Norway, are the main regions of acidic deposition.
- Bog moss secretes acid.
- Litter from conifers is acidic and hard to break down.
- Volcanoes produce a lot of sulfur and nitrogen dioxide. This can lead to a lot of acid rain, like it did in Montserrat in 1995, destroying a cloud forest and a lake.
- Some environments are able to neutralize the effects of acid rain, while some are very sensitive to it. Chalk and limestone are good at it, while granite is not at all resistant to it.
- Reducing use of fossil fuel (requires government inititative for large effects).
- Reduce the number of private cars on roads and increase the amount of people using public transport.
- Switching to low sulfur fuel.
- Removing sulfur before combustion.
- Reducing sulfur oxides released on combustion by FBT or FGD. These methods are expensive, but very effective. Wet scrubbing, spray dry scrubbing, and scrubbing with a sodium sulfite solution.
- Burning coal in the presence of crushed limestone in order to reduce the acidification process.
- Removing sulfur from waste gases after combustion.
- Allowing decomposition of plants to return nutrients to the soil and offset the acidification process.
- Spreading ground limestone, aka liming, in acidified lakes. It's expensive and has to be done several times to be effective. It enables fish and aquatic plants to keep living in the lake.
- Recolonizing damaged systems.
However, an important aspect of these methods is that they're only short-term solutions. If the emissions of sulfur and nitrogen dioxide aren't stopped, the problems will remain.
Human activities have increased the amount of GHGs in the atmosphere, mainly by burning fossil fuels. Here are some examples:
- Burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) which releases CO2 into the atmosphere.
- Deforestation affects CO2 levels.
- Increased cattle farming which has lead to a rise in methane levels.
- Rice farming also contribtues to increased methane levels.
- Agricultural fertilizers have lead to higher nitrous oxide concentrations when the fertilizers break down.
A natural and necessary process in which GHGs allow short-wave radiation to pass through the atmosphere, but trap a percentage of the outgoing long-wave radiation. It increases global temperatures by about 33C, which allows life on Earth.
However, this effect can and has been enchanced or accelerated because of anthropogenic causes.
- UV-B is the most harmful wavelengths of UV radiation.
- Overexposure for humans can lead to eye damage, sunburn, and skin cancers. It can also damage the immune system.
- Phytoplankton are very sensitive to UV-B radiation and can be severely damged by it.
- Other animals can suffer similarly to humans.
- Plants can also be damaged by UV-B.
- Recycling refrigerants.
- Developing alternatives to gas-blown particles, halogenated pesticides, propellants, and aerosols.
- Developing non-propellant alternatives.
- The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) plays a key role in providing information, and creating and evaluating international agreements for the protection of stratospheric ozone.
- There is a huge black market for ODSs.
- ODS substitutes are more expensive than CFCs.
- It is also costly to update equipment to enable use of alternative chemicals.
- The lifetime of CFC-containing equipment is long.
- Penalties in many countries for ODS smuggling is small.
- Formed in 1987.
- An international agreement for the reduction of use of ODCs signed under the direction of UNEP.
- National governments who complied with the agreement made national laws and regulations to decrease the consumption and production of halogenated organic gases such as CFCs.