The Effects Of Acid Rain Environmental Sciences Essay

Acid rain is one of the big poblems that could affect negatveily on the human, animals, environment and even nonliving things like buildings. In general it is rain that Formed when gases, such as CO2 and SO2 react with the water in the atmosphere. It can kill micro-organisms, poisons plants, damages metals and limestone and kills fish.

Introduction:

Acid rain is a serious and dangerous problem because it is very harmful to the environment. It is a rain that has a very high concentration of acid-forming chemicals. These chemicals have been released into the atmosphere and joint with water vapor. Basically acid rain could damage everything over a short period of time and that is because it can makes living things die in the environment. For this reason I chose to write about the acid rain and chose Canada to be the study case.

Before we get through inside the study case, we should know a little information about this problem.

What is acid rain?

Acid rain is a rain or any other form of precipitation like snow that is acidic. Acid rain is downpour containing harmful quantities of nitric and sulfuric acids which released into the atmosphere. When fossil fuels are burned, harmful emotions released into the air. The normal rain has almost pH of 5.6, which is faintly acidic. Unlike the normal rain that we all knew, acid rain has a pH below 5.6. It could consider as a result of air pollution. It has many other names such as acid precipitation or acid deposition. Emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are causing the acid rain, which they can react with the water molecules to produce acids. Acid rain could effects negatively on plants, aquatic animals, and infrastructure.

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The effects of acid rain:

In the atmosphere acid rain can be carried very big and far distances between countries and from continent to another. It can take the form of snow, mists and dry dusts. Respiratory illnesses in animals and humans such as asthma can be caused by the dry dust. Wherever the rain falls, it can have a huge effect on soil, trees, buildings and water.

Effects of acid rain have on our health?

Acid rain affects human being in many different ways. One main way is our health. Acid rain could also effect on the air which can makes the acid rain pollution. Most of the breathing and lung problems in children and adults who have asthma were linked to acid air pollution.

There are many health problems that occur in the U.S. and Canada each year because of this problem. The following are health problems happen due to acid rain:

550 early deaths.

1,520 emergency room visits.

210,070 asthma symptom days.

What effect does acid rain to non-living things?

Just like the acid rain can damage living things, it also could harmful non-living things. For example it could damage the buildings and statues. It could failure building materials and paints. There are many types of materials. All these types will become eroded soon or later by the effects of the climate such as: water, wind, ice and snow which they can help in the erosion process. Unfortunately, acid rain can help to make this natural process faster.

What damage is acid rain doing in Canada?

The damage that caused by the acid rain in Canada is very huge. There are many damages such as: fourteen thousand lakes are now so acidic in this country which led to death for the plants, animals, fish and birds. In addition to that, trees in eastern Canada are dying because acid rain is slows down their growth and sometimes can make the bark splits until the tree dies. Another serious damage of the acid rain is that 84% of agricultural land in eastern Canada is polluted. Also it has been linked to respiratory diseases in children. Furthermore buildings are being affected in this country; especially the buildings that made of marble, granite and limestone. Some Statistics confirm that buildings in Canada are losing 4% of their weight every year.

Why is it doing such many damages in eastern Canada?

Actually the Largest amount of the acid rain that falls on Canada came from the USA. Moreover it is a big problem in eastern Canada because more of the water and soil systems in this region lack natural alkalinity. Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia are the provinces that are part of the Canadian Precambrian Shield and that happened in these particular areas because their water and soil systems cannot fight the damaging consequences of acid rain.

What is being done to solve the issue?

Both of the USA and Canada governments are trying their best to solve this issue. There are several ways that they used to solve this problem. One of them was spraying trees with water to wash off the acid rain but unfortunately this way is not very effective. Nowadays in Canada they are replacing coal fired power stations with gas fired stations. Moreover they added lime to the lakes, rivers and soil. This way is very expensive and cost a lot of money, also it takes a very long time. Another way is fitted equipment in some power stations to remove emissions such as: sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. This is an effective way but at the same time it is too expensive.

Conclusion:

To conclude, acid rain is very important issue that has bad effects in the environment. There would be many health problems that could be avoided, if acid rain became a little less of a problem. We can help to stop this acid rain by a very simple way which is not polluting the air. As they said Prevention is better than cure. Even children can help prevent this pollution by several ways like using less electricity and using transportation that is friendly to the environment.