Environment quality research and development-Air Pollution

A hundred years ago, a book about air pollution would have attracted very few readers. Those that did read it would have felt that it was just about as important as a book about air traffic control, abortion, or pill. Today when the word pollution is mentioned, almost everyone from the child in kindergarten to the octogenarian appreciates that we are talking about a problem affecting all society. Now, pollution has become the sixth or seventh most serious problem in the world. People have started to become concerned about the effects of pollution.

What is Air Pollution?

Air pollution has been defined in many different ways. It means different things to different people. For example, to an airplane pilot, it means poorer visibility and more danger. To someone else, it could mean painful irritation to the eyes. In one sense, air pollution is the contamination of the atmosphere by gaseous, liquid, or solid wastes or by-products that can endanger human health and the health and welfare of plants and animal, or can attack materials, reduce visibility, or produce undesirable odors.

-Sources of air pollution.

1) Transportation-Too much CO and CO2 releases from vehicles.

2) Domestic heating-Part of the greenhouse effect.

3) Electric power generation-Sulfur oxide.

4) Refuse burning-CO2 released.

5) Industrial fuel burning and process emissions-chemical gas released.

-The history of air pollution.

Air pollution is a lot much older than man. Dust has been described as the

ubiquitous pollutant of space, also there is something else even smaller that dust that exists in the space. An early industrial chemical process in England was the manufacture of sodium sulfate that was then roasted with limestone, ultimately resulting in sodium carbonate. A stack effluent from this process was hydrochloric acid gas, which is due course dissolved in the dew on meadow grass; the cows that ate grass got sore months from the hydrochloric acid. By 1864, the discharge of hydrochloric acid was banned by law.

The effect of Air Pollution!

-Meteorology Effect.

Perhaps one of the most interesting and terrifying aspects of air pollution is its

effect on climate. Pollutant concentrates are reduced by atmospheric mixing, which depends on such weather conditions as temperature, wind speed, and the movement of high and low pressure systems and their interaction with the local topography. For example, mountains and valleys. Normally, temperature decreases with altitude. But when a colder layer of air settles under a warm layer, producing a temperature or thermal inversion, atmospheric mixing is retarded and pollutants may accumulate near the ground. Inversions can become sustained under a stationary high-pressure system coupled with low wind speeds.

Bibliography

1.http://www.zdnet.com/pccomp/stories/all/0,6605

2.http://www.epic.org/reports/surfer-beware.html

Word Count: 441