Enviroment - Assignment Example

Download file to see previous pages With that, there are a number of air pollution challenges that need to be taken into concern by all governments in the world so as to eliminate the chances of air pollution becoming tragic to life. First is the emission of smog and smoke from industries. Ozone smog is lethal when subjected to higher temperatures since it can cause severe health issues to humans. Some of the health issues include: severe asthma for individuals who already have the respiratory challenge, lung burn problems, eye irritations and throat damage. Smog has other adverse effects such as acidic rain due to the fact that it contains sulphur compounds. Acidic rain can be very dangerous to the existing water supplies. For example: If acidic rain would pour on earth; that means that the water we drink shall have higher quantities of sulphur- This is very dangerous to public health. In addition to that, acidic rain will cause damage to plant cover as well as organisms in the soil. In this case, human beings as well as animal life will be affected when they consume plant cover that has higher components of sulphur. Another effect of acidic rain is that it speeds up the decay process of objects that is comes into contact with. With those examples, it can be vividly stated that, smog and smoke air pollutions are very dangerous and both can cause a massive challenges to the existing human life, animal life and the earth. A second form of air pollution is through Green House Gases (GHG) such as: Carbon dioxide, Methane, Nitrous Oxide and Fluorinated gases. Carbon dioxide is as a result of burning fossil fuels, the use of petroleum and natural gas. Methane originates from coal burning. Nitrous Dioxide originates from the use of fertilizers that have higher contents of nitrogen and other waste products. According to a 2011 report released by the U.S Greenhouse Emissions, it was revealed that the total emissions of carbon dioxide were 84%, Methane was 9%, Nitrous Oxide was 5% and Fluorinated gases were 2%. In addition to that, the report revealed that electricity was the highest contributor of GHG emissions by a total of 33%; the transportation sector had a total of 28%, industries had 20%; commercial and residential sector had 11%; agricultural sector had 8% (EPA, “Overview of Green House Gases”). This report clearly indicated that GHG are still a challenge due to the reason that they are still emitted from the different sources. However, according to a comparison of GHG emissions from 2010 to 2012 it is clear that GHG emissions are slowly decreasing (EPA, “Trends in Greenhouse Gas Emissions”). The most intensifying risk about GHG is that they take hundreds or even thousands of years to be completely depleted from the atmosphere. With that, they are prone to affect human life in the long term. The challenge brought about by these gases is that they prevent the release of heat from the earth into the atmosphere – ozone layer. As a result, this causes the earth to retain too much heat thereby leading to the global warming effect. The global warming effect causes a change in global climate. That is; it causes warmer temperatures to be experienced in different parts of the world. As a result, these higher temperatures lead to water evaporation from the existing water supplies. In areas where the global warmin ...Download file to see next pagesRead More