Air Quality
VOC means Volatile Organic Compounds
A general term for organic chemicals that evaporate easily or exist as gases in the air.
It blocks oxygen uptake in blood by binding irreversibly to hemoglobin (the protein that carries oxygen in our blood), making hemoglobin unable to hold oxygen and deliver it to cells.
How does CO affect humans?
Splitting nitrogen dioxide (NO2) into nitrous oxide (NO) and oxygen (O). This single O atom is then available to combine with a molecule of O2 to make Ozone (O3).
Ozone is a secondary pollutant caused by a photochemical reaction with another pollutant, such as NOx or volatile organic compounds. What happens to the NOx that results in ozone?
It's a strong oxidizing reagent that damages vegetation, building materials, and sensitive tissues.
Ozone, while beneficial in the stratosphere, is a ground level pollutant causing what types of damage?
They have to install filters and precipitators to remove at least seventy percent of their particulate emissions.
Power plants were the largest source until clean air regulations required the use of what to trap most particulate emissions?
They damage delicate tissues in the eyes and respiratory passages.
The most common exposure to air pollution is through inhalation. The most common effect of NOx and SO2, and O3 is as an irritant. What tissues do they damage and how do those tissues respond?
The trend is that the ozone hole has been able to stabilize or even decrease in recent years. We are expected to be completely back to normal by 2049.
What is evidence of its success?
A very vast area of reduced concentrations of ozone in the stratosphere.
What is meant by "ozone hole"?
Antarctica, spring
Where and what season does the hole occur?
It's a mineral fiber that occurs in rock and soil.
Where does asbestos originate from?
Marble should have the best buffering capacity of the three bedrocks tested.
Which type of bedrock has the best buffering capacity?
This is because it absorbs harmful ultraviolet (UV) solar energy, high-energy wavelengths that can damage plant and animal tissues, including the eyes and the skin.
While ozone is a ground level pollutant, why is it necessary up in the stratosphere?
Its exceptionally cold winter temperatures (-85 to -90 degrees Celsius) help to break down ozone.
Why this time of year?
It's usually used in a wide range of manufactured goods, mostly in building materials, friction products, heat resistant fabrics, packaging, gaskets, and coatings. This is because of its fiber strength and heat resistance.
Why/where is asbestos used?
It also damages infrastructure, vegetation, and aesthetic quality-especially visibility.
Aside from health effects, what else does air pollution damage?
not really sure about this one, possible
Both SO2 and NOx combine with O2 and water in the atmosphere to form acid rain. SO2 forms acid rain?
A colorless, odorless, nonirritating, but highly toxic gas.
Describe carbon monoxide:
It forms Acid Rain, Visibility and Haze, and Nutrient Pollution.
NOx in the atmosphere reacts to form what three things?
Primary pollutants are those released directly from the source into the air in a harmful form. Secondary pollutants are converted to a hazardous form after they enter the air or are formed by chemical reactions as components of the air mix and interact.
Pollutants are also defined by how they are produced. What is the difference between a primary and a secondary pollutant?
Those that do not go through a smokestack. They're hard to monitor, but extremely important sources of air pollution. Examples are dust from soil erosion, strip mining, rock crushing, and building construction (and destruction).
What are fugitive emissions?
It's a cancer-causing, radioactive gas.
What is radon?
Radon is estimated to cause many thousands of deaths each year. That's because when you breathe air containing radon, you can get lung cancer. In fact, the Surgeon General has warned that radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States today. Only smoking causes more lung cancer deaths.
Why is radon dangerous?
Some particles less than 10 micrometers in diameter can get deep into your lungs and some may even get into your bloodstream. Of these, particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, also known as fine particles or PM2.5, pose the greatest risk to health. Fine particles are also the main cause of reduced visibility (haze) in parts of the United States, including many of our treasured national parks and wilderness areas.
Why is the size of particulate matter important to human health?
CO is released when something is burned. The greatest sources of CO to outdoor air are cars, trucks and other vehicles or machinery that burn fossil fuels. A variety of items in your home such as unvented kerosene and gas space heaters, leaking chimneys and furnaces, and gas stoves also release CO and can affect air quality indoors.
How does carbon monoxide form?
Tropospheric, or ground level ozone, is not emitted directly into the air, but is created by chemical reactions between oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOC). This happens when pollutants emitted by cars, power plants, industrial boilers, refineries, chemical plants, and other sources chemically react in the presence of sunlight.
How does ground-level ozone form?
Radon comes from the natural (radioactive) breakdown of uranium in soil, rock and water and gets into the air you breathe.
How does radon get in your home?
It reduces visibility, sometimes very dramatically. It can also be very smelly as well.
How does sulfur dioxide add to aesthetic degradation?
Through incomplete combustion of fuel (coal, oil, charcoal, or gas), as in furnaces, incinerators, engines, or fires, as well as in the decomposition of organic matter.
How is CO (carbon monoxide) produced?
About 10% has been destroyed.
How much stratospheric ozone has been destroyed?
Smog (smoke/fog)
Originally came from burning coal during the industrial revolution. Currently most smog is photochemical smog, a secondary pollutant occurring when sunlight reacts with NO2 and VOCs. This produces ozone which, along with other airborne pollutants, aggravate lungs. The tinier the particle, the further it penetrates lungs, making breathing more difficult, especially for those with asthma and the very young and elderly. PM scatter light, reducing visibility. This tends to be worse in the summer when the sun's energy is the strongest.
a. . Primary standards are intended to protect human health. b. . Secondary standards are set to protect crops, materials, climate, visibility, and personal comfort.
Six major pollutants were regulated in the 1970 Clean Air Act. These conventional or criteria pollutants were addressed first, since they were thought to contribute the most to air degradation. What were the considerations in setting standards?
anthropogenic
VOCs are naturally produced by plants. The harmful VOCs, however, are _______________. Since these pollutants are volatile (evaporate easily), they suspend in the air, and are important contributors to toxic air pollution. They are "breathed in" by plants and animals.
Elevated lead in the environment can result in decreased growth and reproduction in plants and animals, and neurological effects in vertebrates.
What are the environmental impacts associated with lead exposure?
Breathing air with a high concentration of CO reduces the amount of oxygen that can be transported in the blood stream to critical organs like the heart and brain. At very high levels, which are possible indoors or in other enclosed environments, CO can cause dizziness, confusion, unconsciousness and death.
What are the human health concerns and who is most at risk?
It can result in having a higher risk of developing lung disease (cancer), mesothelioma, and asbestosis.
What are the human health impacts associated with asbestos exposure?
It can affect the nervous system, kidney function, immune system, reproductive and developmental systems and the cardiovascular system. Lead exposure also affects the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood. The lead effects most likely to be encountered in current populations are neurological effects in children. Infants and young children are especially sensitive to lead exposures, which may contribute to behavioral problems, learning deficits and lowered IQ.
What are the human health impacts due to the exposure of lead?
Breathing air with a high concentration of NO2 can irritate airways in the human respiratory system. Such exposures over short periods can aggravate respiratory diseases, particularly asthma, leading to respiratory symptoms (such as coughing, wheezing or difficulty breathing), hospital admissions and visits to emergency rooms. Longer exposures to elevated concentrations of NO2 may contribute to the development of asthma and potentially increase susceptibility to respiratory infections.
What are the human health impacts of NOx pollution?
Ore and metals processing and piston-engine aircraft operating on leaded aviation fuel. Other sources are waste incinerators, utilities, and lead-acid battery manufacturers. The highest air concentrations of lead are usually found near lead smelters.
What are the primary sources of lead pollution?
Lead in motor vehicle gasoline was a big problem before 1980. Other sources are ore and metals processing and piston-engine aircraft operating on leaded aviation fuel. Others are waste incinerators, utilities, and lead-acid battery manufacturers. The highest concentrations of lead are found near lead smelters.
What are the primary sources of lead? (prior to 1980 and currently)
Forest soils have become depleted of natural buffering reserves of basic cations such as calcium and magnesium through the years of exposure to acid rain.
What changes to forest soils are damaging trees to die off?
The wind can carry dust contaminants great distances by the wind. Pollution due to the industrial belt between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River Valley regularly contaminate the Canadian Maritime Provinces, and is sometimes tracked all the way to Ireland.
What is an example, from the Ohio Valley, of air pollution not being at all local?
Global distillation or the grasshopper effect is the geochemical process by which certain chemicals, most notably persistent organic pollutants, are transported from warmer to colder regions of the Earth, particularly the poles and mountain tops. This causes bioaccumulation in food chains, and then eventually causes these chemicals to be found in the blood of humans.
What is the "grasshopper effect"?
It was an agreement to phase out most use of CFCs by 1996. This worked because there was money to help poorer countries switch to non-CFC technologies. Also, there were already alternatives to CFCs for most uses that existed.
What is the Montreal Protocol and why was it so successful?
It depends on where it is found. Stratospheric ozone is good and occurs naturally in the upper atmosphere that helps to form a protective layer that shields us from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays. Ozone at ground level is a harmful air pollutant, because of its effects on people and the environment, and it is the main ingredient in "smog."
What is the difference between good ozone and bad ozone?
The greatest harm to fish is when the eggs and young of many species are killed when the pH drops to about 5.0. This reduction of pH can also kill food sources for the fish as well.
What is the greatest direct harm to fish?
NO2 primarily gets in the air from the burning of fuel. NO2 forms from emissions from cars, trucks and buses, power plants, and off-road equipment.
What is/are the source(s) of NOx's in the atmosphere?
Pm10: inhalable particles, with diameters that are generally 10 micrometers and smaller Pm2.5: fine inhalable particles, with diameters that are generally 2.5 micrometers and smaller.
What two categories are used in classifying particulate matter?
Sulfuric Acid and Nitric Acid are the primary causes of acid deposition.
What two gases are the primary causes of acid deposition?
Human activities such as internal combustion engines in transportation, land-clearing fires, and cooking fires.
Where do most of the CO emissions come from?
This is because these countries are growing at explosive rates to incredible sizes, and environmental quality can be abysmal because they don't set ways to get better or don't follow the rules (not too sure on this one).
Why are parts of the developing world still suffering from air pollution?
This is because globally, most of the gasoline is still leaded gasoline, as well as metal ore smelting and coal burning.
Why does lead still represent 2⁄3 of all metallic air pollution globally?
a. . Concentrations of toxic air pollutants are often higher indoors than outdoors that could be illegal outside or in the workplace. b. . Being indoors also means less ventilation and more enclosed spaces.
Why is indoor air quality usually worse than outdoor air?
Catalytic converters
____________ ____________ are now required on vehicles to ensure complete fuel combustion.
Asbestos
A long, thin, fibrous silicate mineral with insulating properties, which can cause cancer when inhaled.
They're found in smoke or haze and can be produced by fires, power plants, or vehicle exhaust.
Aerosols are very fine particulate matter. Like other forms of air pollution, some aerosols have natural causes, such as pollen, spores, dust, and perhaps ash. They reduce visibility and leave surfaces dirty. Particles small enough to be breathed are potentially hazardous and are monitored under the Clean Air Act. What are the primary sources of these harmful particulates?
Things such as odors and lost visibility that are important consequences of air pollution. They're important because they can strongly impact our quality of life and increase stress, which affects health, but doesn't threaten life or health directly.
Air pollution affects many aspects of our health and environment, including aesthetic degradation. What is aesthetic degradation, and why is it also important?
Nitrous oxide (N2O)
All NOx in the air is considered a pollutant. NO2 is commonly known as nitrogen dioxide. Which NOx is also a greenhouse gas?
The lead levels have dropped 90% and the average IQs have risen by three points.
Banning lead from gasoline was one of the most successful pollution-control measures in our history. What happened to lead levels and children's IQ within a short time?
They had serious air pollution problems such as chronic bad air and occasional severe smog events, until they finally adopted pollution controls slowly.
Describe air quality in the United States and other European countries 40-50 years ago, and what caused the change?
It has resulted in overall pollution reduction, yet some local "hot spots" remain where owners have found it cheaper to pay someone else to reduce pollution than do it themselves.
Describe benefits and pitfalls of cap & trade approach:
Breathing elevated concentrations of ozone can trigger a variety of responses, such as chest pain, coughing, throat irritation, and airway inflammation. It also can reduce lung function and harm lung tissue. Ozone can worsen bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma, leading to increased medical care.
Describe the human health impacts associated with exposure to ozone:
To be buffered means you resist, somewhat, pH changes. The buffered water contained ions that helped neutralize the acid, so it required more acid rain to acidify the buffered water than the distilled water, which lacked these ions.
How can you explain the difference in the amounts of acid rain required to acidify the distilled water and the buffered water?
It could cause crop damage because it changes the pH of soil to more acidic, making the conditions for the plant to grow more difficult.
How could acid rain affect food supplies?
This causes a stable layer of air to settle near the ground, while warmer air sits above. In these stable conditions, pollutants can accumulate to very high concentrations.
How do temperature inversions trap pollutants?
It affects the environment when 90 percent of the CO in the air is converted to CO2 in photochemical reactions that produce ozone. CO2 in the atmosphere is bad for humans, animals, and plants, so we need to try to get away from that.
How do these CO emissions adversely affect the environment?
(Alkaline = base. When something is alkaline, it is basic, as in opposite of acidic). Alkalinity slows the rate of surface water acidification; highly alkaline surface water will take longer to acidify than surface water with low alkalinity, because buffered solutions resist changes in pH better than non-buffered solutions.
How does alkalinity affect the rate of surface water acidification?
Organisms that are more sensitive to changes in pH, such as plankton, are affected and die first. As the pH continues to drop, fish eggs and young cannot develop. Species that may be more tolerant to changes in pH are consequently affected as their food resources disappear. The change in acidity may not directly kill all the organisms. However, many more organisms will suffer as the ecosystem is disturbed.
Acidification of lakes and streams is a major problem for places where the soil and bedrock cannot effectively neutralize acid rain. Explain how acid rain night negatively impact these aquatic ecosystems.
This is because these CFCs and other ozone-destroying gases are also powerful greenhouse gases. So decreasing these also decreases the global warming going on.
Although not its intention, how does the Montreal Protocol help alleviate climate change?
POP (from ch. 18) means Persistent Organic Pollutants
Are organic compounds that are resistant to environmental degradation through chemical, biological, and photolytic processes. They may or may not be volatile, but they are persistent! If they are volatile, they are considered VOCs as well. If not, they persist in the soil and water. Solid/liquid of these bioaccumulate.
organic
Both VOCs and POPs are __________ molecules. The most common are DDT, PCBs, and dioxins.
Limestone and marble are being destroyed ny atmospheric acids at an alarming rate.
Building and statues made of what materials are being destroyed by acid rain?
At this time, farmland soils were often left bare, especially during severe drought, and billions of tons of topsoil blew away from farmlands.
Courser particles, while not staying suspended in the air, can be swept up in the air with winds. This is what happened in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. What caused the Dust Bowl?
They were extremely useful as industrial gases and in refrigerators, air conditioners, styrofoam inflation, and aerosol spray cans for many years.
Halogen gases, especially CFCs, which stand for Chlorine-based aerosols, especially chlorofluorocarbons were responsible. What were some common uses of CFCs and why were they so common?
Highly reactive gases formed when nitrogen in fuel or in air is heated (during combustion) to temperatures above 650 degrees Celsius (1,200 degrees Fahrenheit) in the presence of oxygen.
How are nitrogen oxides produced?
They can get released into the air when asbestos-containing material is disturbed (when it's disturbed or damaged) during product use, demolition work, and building or home maintenance, repair, and remodeling.
How are people exposed to asbestos?
They can damage sensitive cell membranes much as irritants do in human lungs. Discoloring in leaves due to bleaching of chlorophyll, and then dead spots develop, which can eventually even cause death.
How can air pollutants damage plants directly?
Some are emitted directly from a source, such as construction sites, unpaved roads, fields, smokestacks or fires. Most particles form in the atmosphere as a result of complex reactions of chemicals such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which are pollutants emitted from power plants, industries and automobiles.
Identify four sources of particulate matter:
just read
If air pollution is chronic, inflammation is more severe and persistent, leading to bronchitis and possibly emphysema. This disease causes airways to be permanently constricted. Stagnant air gets trapped in airways and swell.
(Limestone is mainly CaCO3, calcium carbonate, which acts as a base). Areas containing limestone bedrock will likely have surface water with a higher pH than those areas with granite bedrock. Limestone, like marble, acts to neutralize acid rain. Granite does not react with acid rain, therefore the pH would be lower (and water more acidic) in these areas.
Marble is a metamorphic rock that is derived from the sedimentary rock, limestone. How would you expect the pH of surface water in areas containing limestone bedrock to compare to the surface water in areas having granite bedrock?
They are tuna fish.
Mercury, by itself, is not a problem for fish, but aquatic bacteria convert it into methyl mercury, which bioaccumulates in fish. What fish is responsible for about 40% of all exposure to mercury in the US?
It's a powerful neurotoxin that damages the brain and central nervous system at high doses. Smaller amounts can still cause nerve damage and developmental defects in children.
Mercury, mostly from combustion of coal, is the 2nd most common toxic metal air pollutant. (The 3rd is probably cadmium, from metal mining and batteries). What is the health threat from mercury?
Excess nitrogen from agricultural fertilizer use and production.
Most NOx results from the burning of fossil fuels (oil or transportation and coal for electricity). What is a third source of NOx in the air?
Primarily from coal burning and smelting. Once in the atmosphere, it combines with atmospheric oxygen and water vapor to form sulfuric acid, a major component of acid rain.
Most anthropogenic sulfur in our atmosphere is in the form of sulfur dioxide. What is its chief cause?
VOCs are often components of petroleum fuels, hydraulic fluids, paint thinners, and dry cleaning agents.
The worst indoor pollution comes from cigarettes. The next most common indoor pollutant is VOCs, including formaldehyde. Google what types of materials produce VOCs:
At night or on cold days, air near the ground cools, or cold air may sink down into a valley from surrounding hills. This could last from a few hours to a few days until new warmer weather moves in.
Topography, shifting winds and temperatures affect the movement and concentration of air pollutants. Normally, warm air rises and this starts a circulation pattern (convection current) that moves pollutants out of an area. What conditions cause temperature inversions?
A wide range of industrial and mining processes like smelting of metal ores, mining, and burning of coal and municipal waste when lead is involved, and burning of gasoline when lead is involved.
Until the 1980s, what was the main source of lead in our air?
AQI (Air Quality Index)
Used to measure and report air quality in a specific area (color coded & numbers). The higher it is the worse the air pollution levels and air quality are.
Filters trap particulates in a mesh of cotton cloth, spun glass fibers, or asbestos-cellulose. Electrostatic precipitators are the most common particulate controls in power plants. As particles pick up an electrostatic surface charge, they pass between large electrodes in the effluent stream. Charged particles then collect on an oppositely charged collecting plate. The ash collected from this is a solid waste and must be buried in landfills or other solid-waste disposal sites.
We now try to capture as many particulates as possible using filters or electrostatic precipitators. Describe both:
Smoky and poorly ventilated heating and cooking fires are the greatest source of indoor air pollution.
What are some of the more common sources of air pollution in less developed countries?
Ground-level ozone, particle pollution, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide
What are the 5 major air pollutants regulated by the EPA according to the Clean Air Act?
Top carnivores in polar regions have been found to have dangerous levels of chemicals in their systems, which can lead to the people that eat these carnivores to have high concentrations as well in their blood.
What are the environmental effects and human costs of this process of carrying air pollutants?
The ecological effects of acid rain are most clearly seen in aquatic environments, such as streams, lakes, and marshes where it can be harmful to fish and other wildlife. As it flows through the soil, acidic rain water can leach aluminum from soil clay particles and then flow into streams and lakes. The more acid that is introduced to the ecosystem, the more aluminum is released. Dead or dying trees are a common sight in areas effected by acid rain. Acid rain leaches aluminum from the soil. That aluminum may be harmful to plants as well as animals. Acid rain also removes minerals and nutrients from the soil that trees need to grow. Many forests, streams, and lakes that experience acid rain don't suffer effects because the soil in those areas can buffer the acid rain by neutralizing the acidity in the rainwater flowing through it. This capacity depends on the thickness and composition of the soil and the type of bedrock underneath it. In areas such as mountainous parts of the Northeast United States, the soil is thin and lacks the ability to adequately neutralize the acid in the rain water. As a result, these areas are particularly vulnerable and the acid and aluminum can accumulate in the soil, streams, or lakes.
Identify and describe 3 environmental impacts associated with acid deposition.
That stratospheric ozone concentrations over the South Pole were dropping precipitously during the months of September and October every year as the sun reappeared at the end of the long polar winter.
In 1885, what did the British Antarctic Atmospheric Survey discover?
Most natural "bases" in water are variations of carbonate (CO32-). Calcium carbonate (CaCO3), bicarbonate (HCO3-), and carbonate ions. Hydroxide (OH-) ions are also naturally found. These originate from rocks and minerals that water encounters as it flows to a lake or stream. In areas that contain large quantities of limestone (calcium carbonate), the surface water tends to be more alkaline.
In a natural environment, what contributes to surface water alkalinity?
It comes from soot or fine particulate material of PM 2.5 particles.
In industrialized countries, the biggest health threat comes from what?
Our nervous systems and other critical functions.
Lead is the most abundantly produced metal air pollutant. Lead is very harmful to human health. What body system is affected?
Ash and gases from volcanoes and desert dust. Additionally, trees can emit volatile organic compounds (terpenes and isoprenes), and decaying vegetation in swamps produces methane, as do termites and ruminant animals. Forest fires produce particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and carbon monoxide.
List several natural causes of air pollution:
Tall smokestacks were built to send emissions far from the source, where they became unidentifiable and largely untraceable. However, they're now some of our most serious pollution problems. There is no way to just throw away what we emit.
Many areas affected by acid rain have improved due to stronger pollution control regulations. Our first approach towards pollution control was "dilution is the solution." What does that mean, and what did it lead to?