What is Air Pollution
What Is Air Pollution?
Being sick is pretty lousy, isn’t it? If you know someone who has a cold, you tend to steer clear of them because you don’t want to catch their germs. Every time that person coughs or sneezes, their germs get put into the air and are then free to travel to the next person. Can you imagine trying to contain something like that in the air? It would be pretty difficult because, not only are the germs invisible, but they expand outward as they enter the air.
Being sick is pretty lousy, isn’t it? If you know someone who has a cold, you tend to steer clear of them because you don’t want to catch their germs. Every time that person coughs or sneezes, their germs get put into the air and are then free to travel to the next person. Can you imagine trying to contain something like that in the air? It would be pretty difficult because, not only are the germs invisible, but they expand outward as they enter the air.
We don’t think of germs as air pollution, but it really is the same idea. Air pollutants are gases and particles in the atmosphere that harm organisms and affect climate. Air pollution, then, is the release of these particles and gases into the air. For the previous example, the germs would be the pollutants, but the air wouldn’t be polluted until those germs are sneezed out.
When you think of air pollution, you likely think of human activities, such as coal-burning plants and emissions from cars, planes and boats. But, air pollution also comes from natural sources. Volcanoes are a great example of a natural pollution source; they produce large amounts of particles and gases, and the eruptions send them up into the atmosphere. Forest fires are a natural process that also produce large amounts of potentially harmful gas and particulate matter.
No matter the source, there are two ways pollution can enter the air. Point source pollution is when the air pollutants come from a single source of origin, such as smokestacks at a single factory. Non-point source pollution is when the air pollutants come from many sources, such as all of the cars in the U.S.
Just like not all sources of pollution are the same, pollutants also vary in their effects. Primary pollutants are those that cause direct harm or that can react to form harmful substances in the atmosphere. Secondary pollutants are those harmful substances that are created from the reactions between primary pollutants and the components of the atmosphere.
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