What is the cause of air pollution and is it getting worse?

Factual Questions
1

There has bee a lot of rhetoric about the environment and poor air quality in the presidential race. Granted, I am looking out my window at a smog cloud in my city of 2.5 million.

First of all, is air quality getting better or worse in general? Is air quality simply getting worse in cities with increasing populations?

If so, what is causing the worsening air quality in the US?

It seems to me that as we move to a more technology based society, that oil refineries and steel mills and heavy industry are decreasing.

Anyone have any insight?

2

The answers to all of these questions depends on who you ask. If you ask the Sierra Club, it’s caused by cars and it’s getting worse. If you ask General Motors, it’s getting better ever since they installed catalytic converters and anyway, it wasn’t cars, it was power plants burning coal. If you ask Con Ed, it’s not the power plants, it’s all those environmentalists who make mountains out of molehills–“So a few trees die from acid rain, so what?”

It depends on who you listen to, and which set of statistics he’s using, and what kind of spin he’s putting on them, and what style of axe he’s grinding at the moment.

3

Many things that emit harmful gases cause air pollution, such as exhaust from cars, burning of coal in factories, slash and burn in developing countries, etc. Air quality is continuing to get worse because new inventions that cut down on air pollution has not been widely used yet.

4

air quality keeps getting worse because even though cars and factories pollute less per unit, the number of people keeps increasing. The best way to cut pollution is to stop making more people.

5

Right you are , sailor. I’m no expert, but here’s a very partial list of some of the suff that goes into the air and causes problems:

carbon monoxide, which is poisonous
carbon dioxode, which is a greehouse gas
carbon (soot) which is unsightly and causes breathing problems
evaporated gasoline and other volatiles, which are also components of smog
chloroflourocorbons (freon, etc) which eat at the ozone layer, exposing us to ultraviolet radiation
sulphur from coal, which produces acid rain
mercury, which gets into the food supply and causes brain damage
lead, ditto

And that’s not all!

6

This is not true. I’m sure someone will follow up with stats.

michael

7

Not an answerable question, because “air pollution” keeps getting redefined, as does the place in which the answer is supposed to apply

If we reword the question to, “Given the definition generally accepted on e.g., 1 January 1970, is air pollution in, e.g., Pittsburgh getting worse?”, it can be answered; the answer is generally, “No”.

8

Although AKATSUKAMI is right that the standards for air pollution keep changing, I would say that air quality is getting worse. Measure it however you want, but it’s becoming less and less healthy for us. There has been a lot of effort in implementing pollution control measures, but the increasing population with increasing energy & resource demands can outpace this.

9

Lots of sources:
[ul]
[li]Trees - This is why we’re chopping down the rain forests. Sure, they make O[sub]2[/sub] during the day, but at night they make just as much CO[sub]2[/sub].[/li][li]Cows - Their methane flatulance is also polluting. That’s why we kill these evil beasts. And, we might as well eat their flesh, eh?[/li][li]Restrictions on land fills - we’re trying to bury our garbage before its decomposition pollutes. Plus, we’re making new land to build subdivisions.[/li][li]Restrictions on ocean dumping - this returned carbon (eventually) to the sea floor, which is then subducted into the Earth’s mantle and reformed into petrochemicals for our descendants.[/li][li]Restrictions on ozone emmisions - we’re just trying to patch the hole in the upper atmosphere. It just takes a while for it to get way up there.[/li][/ul]

10

When I went to the EPA’s site, It showed a decrease in almost every single substance that causes air pollution ( http://www.epa.gov/oar/aqtrnd98/ ). Granted, specific cities may be worsening doe to increased auto traffic, but where is everyone getting the stats for an increase?

Besides, I want to know what teh source of the pollution is. Is it mostly cars?

Could someone please help me? I am in a major debate with my cousin and besides, I think this is an important item to know given that so many political races involve this as a major issue.

11

As listed above, there are many sources. The air quality out in BFE, Texas (where I live, farmland, cows and goats) is not so hot due to all the methane from the cattle and all of the trees.

My Dad has been doing environmental quality stuff since the early 80s. After I heard this squirrelly, hick liberal (and I can say this, because I am pretty liberal on most issues, but people constantly skew the facts) on NPR a few days ago whining about the air quality in Texas going down after G.W. Bush handed out tax breaks for a few large (potentially enviromentally hazardous) corporations and then (GWB) claimed to be environmentally sensitive, I asked my Dad about this. He said that the pollution is down in CA and way up over here because of weather patterns. Apparently the air quality overall has remained relatively stable, but the changing weather patterns (hot dry air makes for more Ozone Action Days) are responsible for the changing stats. The draught we have experienced here in Texas for the past 3 years is the reason for our increased air pollution. Also the fires in Mexico a few years back blew a bunch of smoke up our way - Austin was smoggy for a few months. He said that the trees and cows and such contributed more to the problem than industry. I might could sqeeze a few sources out of him, but he’s not too thrilled to talk about environmental issues after being immersed in it all work-week long.

12

>> Trees - This is why we’re chopping down the rain forests. Sure, they make O2 during the day, but at night they make just as much CO2

Hmm, I am trying to find some joke or sarcasm here but cannot find it. You are not serious AWB, are you?

I mean where do you think all the wood, leaves etc come from? Their carbon is taken from the atmospheric CO2 and the oxigen released. How can they possibly undo it at night and the plant keep growing?

The cycle is only completed when I burn the wood in my stove and the carbon goes up the flue as CO2 again

13

sailor asks:

In the same way that swine like us (and swine) can take in vast amounts of oxygen, food, and water and not grow (well, I’m growing sideways some…).

Is the plant undergoing net growth? If so, then it’s doing a net carbon drawdown on the atmosphere. If not, then, as AWB stated (jokingly or otherwise), the consumption of CO2 by the plant during the day to produce sugar and O2 is balanced by its consumption of O2 at night to oxidize sugar to CO2.

This is why it’s so important to cut mature trees and turn them into a non-oxidized form of cellulose (say, lumber or paper), and allow new trees to grow in their places.

14

Many years ago I read that trees produce their own brand of air pollution-terpenes. Thes are volatile organic hydrocarbons , which cause a kind of smog (the blue haze seen in the Great Smokey Mountains is due to these chemicals).
My question: do these natural tturpenes cause any health problems for humans, and
(2) should we be chopping down trees instead of planting them?

15

I’ll ask my dad about these. He mentioned them when I asked him about the air pollution in Texas. Will report back with info.

16

Well Zambezi, I can speak some about power plants and their contribution to pollution.

Due to the Clean Air Act and it’s Amendments, emissions we commonly refer to as pollution have been declining steadily from power plants in the US. Other, similar legislation has led to a similar decrease in much of the developed world.

(As a side note - many environmentalists love to claim that the US has “some of the least stringent emissions regulations in the world” for it’s coal plants - something that is entirely untrue. In fact, most foreign utilities I deal with are thankful every day they aren’t subject to the same strict limits that the US plants are from Federal, State, and local laws. And the air pollution emissions from Chinese, Russian, and Eastern European plants is so bad it has to be seen to be believed.)

In 1994, steam-electric fossil plant emissions were:
*SO2 - 14,211,000 short tons
*NOx - 6,790,000 short tons
*CO2 - 1,986,079,000 short tons

In 1998, they were:
*SO2 - 12,432,000 short tons
*NOx - 7,221,000 short tons
*CO2 - 2,209,286,000 short tons

Emissions Table

Also Zambezi, try this link:
Emissions Trends

Note that although total NOx emissions have increased, as a function of the increase in generation between the years illustrated they have actually fallen slightly.

By switching to lower-sulfur coal and installing scrubbers, SO2 emissions have greatly fallen across the US from power plants (not really an issue with gas plants). NOx has also been steadily reduced, and now that we are in Phase 2 many coal plants will be forced to switch to Powder River Basin coal, and/or perform capital improvements, such as:

*install low-NOx burners and overfire air
*install selective catalytic reduction and non-catalytic reduction systems
*install neural net tuning systems for NOx control

Then you have particulates, whose emissions are regulated but primarily for reasons that (at first) didn’t directly derive from health concerns, such as opacity and haze. The EPA would like to impose new limits on very fine particulates, the so-called “PM 2.5 emissions”, which very arguably are said to a source of respiratory problems in children and the elderly.

Carbon MONoxide (CO) is not typically a problem with well-tuned US power plants, although Eastern Eurpoean and Asian plants can have serious issues with this.

The EPA is also evaluating whether or not heavy metals found in coal and released during combustion will be subject to monitoring requirements and possible limitations. Dangerous things emitted from burning coal include mercury, arsenic, cadmium, nickel, - oh hell, just name any toxic heavy metal. If reductions are mandated, plants will install scrubbers for heavy metals, or switch to coals with less of the offensive elements.

That having been said, even if you get rid of the SOx, the NOx, the CO, the particulates, the heavy metals, we still have “pollution” in the form of CO2 - a greenhouse gas whose emissions the Kyoto treaty seeks to limit. As electrical demand increases, fossil output has been steadily increasing - cleaner output true, but still a CO2 load. So you could say that pollution overall has only been declining slightly as far as power plants are concerned, or you could say that it is increasing if you count CO2.

I could write a couple books about this subject, so I better stop now.

Automobiles have been subject to ever increasing emissions restrictions, and the US has some of the most strict limits in the world. One could say that overall, the traditional “bad” pollution (SO2, NOx, particulates) has been declining as well, but you still have a greater amount of cars which are still contributing to the CO2 loading.

Can’t wait 'till a coal power plants thread starts…damn I have a boring life.

17

Of course I was! Gee, do I have to put :smiley: after all my sarcasm?

Of course, there is the theory that trees have flatulance. I remember the headline from the gardening section of the newspaper: “Trees Break Wind”.

:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

18

Wow! I am impressed Anthracite! YOu know as much about power plants as I do about insurance. We sure do know how to live, don’t we?

Do you have any idea of the ration of auto pollutants to power plant pollutants?

Also, who creates the standards?

It is my suspicion that the US president has little to do with the actual pollution controls and with enforcement.

19

Turpenes

I asked my dad about these last night. He said that they weren’t harmful to humans. In Houston, trees account for 60-70% of VOCs. Dad said that other emissions (SO2 & NOx) were down and the only way to cut the CO2 down (in Houston) is to cut more trees down which raises the temp which creates more ozone, blah, blah, blah. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

20

You know, you would not believe how difficult it is to find info on total tons of pollutants emitted by mobile sources. I can find cubic buttloads of data for power plants, but almost none for cars and planes. Normally, I see references along the lines of “everybody knows fossil power plants are the primary source of air pollution”, but I rarely see any quotes. The California CARB says that motor vehicles account for “55 percent of all air pollution in the state”, so there’s a sample that says cars are the major source - at least in one area.

CARB

Here is a report by the EIA that might help:
EIA Report

Once again, it depends also on how you define pollution: traditional SO2, NOx, etc - the “acid rain” pollutants, or CO, lead, heavy metals - the “deadly” pollutants, or CO2 and H2O, the “greenhouse gas” pollutants.

Who creates the standards? Well, Congress does in a general sense, but then the EPA is given very broad leeway as to how to interpet the standards, and how they can actually be met. The EPA tried a few years ago to say that certain fossil plants could not use low-NOx burners to reduce NOx emissions, instead having to use much more expensive back-end cleanup methods. Utilities had to take the EPA to the Supreme Court to get them to back down. Similar things have happened with with regulations for meeting SO2 emissions requirements, and no a case is pending for the EPA’s PM 2.5 regulations that are proposed (the very-fine particles said to cause respiratory problems).

EPA in Supreme Court over PM 2.5

The president has a tremendous amount of control over this, in that he or she controls the administration of the EPA, and thus the body that develops the rules for following the regulations that are passed.