Acid Rain example essay topic

Acid rain is a serious problem with disastrous effects. Each day this problem seems to increases, many people think that this issue is too small to deal with, this problem needs to be solved head on and it should be solved before it gets too late. In the fallowing paragraphs I will be discussing the impact it has on the wild life and our atmosphere, how our atmosphere is being and becoming destroyed by acid rain. Acid rain is a cancer eating into Eastern Canada and the North Eastern United States. In Canada, the main sulphuric acid source are nonferrous smelters and power generation. On both sides of the border, cars and trucks are the main sources for nitric acid (about 40% of the total), While power generating plants and industrial commercial and residential fuel combustion together contribute most of the rest.

In the air, the sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides can be transformed into sulphuric acid and nitric acid, and air currents can send them thousands of kilometers from the source. When the acids fall on to the earth in any way or form it will have a large impact on the growth or the preservation of certain wildlife. Areas in Ontario mainly southern regions that are near the Great Lakes, such substances as limestone or other known antacids can neutralize acids entering the body of water thereby protecting it. However, large areas of Ontario that are near the Pre-Cambrian Shield, with quartzite or granite based geology and little top soil, there is not enough buffering capacity to neutralize even small amounts of acid falling on the soil and the lakes. Therefore over time, the basic environment shifts from an alkaline to an acidic one. This is why many lakes in Muskoka, Haliburton, Algonquin, Parry Sound and Manitoulin districts could lose their fisheries if sulphur emissions are not reduced substantially.

Canada does not have many people, power plants or automobiles as the United States, and yet acid rain there has become so severe that the Canadian government officials called it the most pressing environmental issue facing the nation. But it is important to bear in mind that acid rain is only one segment, of the widespread pollution of the atmosphere facing the world. Each year the global atmosphere is on the receiving end of 20 billion tons of carbon dioxide, 130 million tons of suffer dioxide, 97 million tons of hydrocarbons, 53 million tons of nitrogen oxides, more than three million tons of arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, nickel, zinc and other toxic metals, and a host of synthetic organic compounds ranging from poly chlorinated biphenyl's (PCBs) to and other pesticides, a number of which may be capable of causing cancer, birth defects, or genetic imbalances. There is evidence that the rain is destroying the productivity of the one rich soils themselves, like an overdose of chemical fertilizer or a gigantic drenching of vinegar. The damage of such overdosing may not be repairable or reversible.

On the other hand on some croplands, tomatoes grow to only half their full weight, and the leaves of radishes wither. Naturally it rains in the city too. The rain eats away on great stone monuments and concrete structures, and the rain seems to corroding the pipes which channel the water away to the lakes and the cycle is repeated. Paints and automobile paints have it's life reduced due to the pollution in the atmosphere speeding up the corrosion process. In some communities the drinking water is laced with toxic metals freed from metal pipes by the acidity. As if urban skies were not already gray enough, typical visibility has declined from 10 to 4 miles, along the Eastern seaboard, as acid rain turns into smog.

Also, now there are indicators that the components of acid rain are a health risk, linked to human respiratory disease. However, the acidification of water supplies could result in increased concentrations of metals in plumbing such as lead, copper and zinc which could result in adverse health effects. After any period of non-use, water taps at Summer cottages or ski chalets they should run the taps for at least 60 seconds to flush any excess debris. The average mean of pH rain fall Ontario's Muskoka-Haliburton lake country ranges between 3.95 and 4.38 about 40 times more acidic than normal rainfall, while storms in Pennsylvania have rainfall pH at 2.8 it almost has the same rating for vinegar. Already 140 Ontario lakes are completely dead or dying. An additional 48,000 are sensitive and vulnerable to acid rain due to the surrounding concentrated acidic soils.

Interactions of pollutants can cause problems. In addition to contributing to acid rain, nitrogen oxides can react with hydrocarbons to produce ozone, a major air pollutant responsible in the United States for annual losses of $2 billion to 4.5 billion worth of wheat, corn, soybeans, and peanuts. A whole range of interactions can occur many unknown with toxic metals. In Canada, Ontario alone has lost the fish in the estimated 4000 lakes and provincial authorities calculated that Ontario stands to lose the fish in 48,500 more lakes within the next twenty years if acid rain continues at the present rate.

Ontario is not alone, on Nova Scotia's Eastern most shores, almost every river flowing to the Atlantic Ocean is poisoned with acid. Further threatening $2 million a year fishing industry. Acid rain is killing more than lakes. It can wither ferns and lichens, accelerate the death of coniferous needles, sterilize seeds, and weaken the forests to a state that is vulnerable to disease infestation and decay.

In the soil the acid neutralizes chemicals vital for growth, strips others from the soil and carries them to the lakes and literally retards the respiration of the soil. The rate of forest growth in the White Mountains of New Hampshire has declined 18% between 1956 and 1965, time of increasingly intense acidic rainfall. Acid rain no longer falls exclusively on the lakes, forest, and thin soils of the Northeast it now covers half the continent. Although there is very little data, the evidence indicates that in the last twenty to thirty years the acidity of rain has increased in many parts of the United States.

Presently, the United States annually discharges more than 26 million tons of suffer dioxide into the atmosphere. Just three states, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois are responsible for nearly a quarter of this total. Overall, two- thirds of the suffer dioxide into the atmosphere over the United States comes from coal-fired and oil plants. Industrial boiler, smelters, and refineries contribute 26%; commercial institutions and residences 5%; and transportation 3%.

The outlook for further emissions of suffer dioxide is not a bright one. Between now and the year 2000, United States utilities are expected to double the amount of coal they burn. The United States currently pumps some 23 million tons of nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere in the course of the year. Transportation sources account for 40%; power plants, 30%; industrial sources, 25%; and commercial institutions and residues, 5%. What makes these figures particularly distributing is that nitrogen oxide emissions have tripled in the last thirty years. Acid rain seems to be quite real.

Acid rain also is very threatening problem to many things. If only one government decides to take action, that's just not enough. To help and take care of this problem we must all come together and work together on this for at least a reduction in the contaminates contributing to acid rain. Although there are right steps in the right direction but the government should crack down on the factories that are not using the best filtering systems when they are incinerating or if the factory is giving off any other dangerous fumes. A question that I have had in mind for the time I started this project, the project to learn a little more on acid rain, Would you rather pay a little of the price now or take a lot more later?