Acid rain 9
Acid rain 9Acid 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 polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) to toxaphene 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....
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