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Air Pollution - The Causes and Effect

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Air Pollution - The Causes & Effect .
Defi-Air pollution, both indoors and outdoors, poses health risks to millions of Americans every day, contributing to asthma, emphysema, heart disease, and other potentially lethal conditions. Managing air pollution causes, and defending successful safeguards like the Clean Air Act, is critical to the human, economic, and environmental health of our communities.
America’s power plants are our biggest industrial polluters. Each year they pump more than two billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air. Carbon pollution is causing climate change that drives dangerous heat waves and worsening smog pollution, which causes asthma attacks and other serious respiratory illnesses.
Thus climate …show more content…

last revised 7/20/2011
Air Pollution: Smog, Smoke and Pollen

National Map: Air Pollution Vulnerability

Rising temperatures can make smog pollution worse and increase the number of "bad air days" when it 's hard to breathe. This puts many of us at risk for irritated eyes, noses, and lungs -- but it is particularly dangerous for people with respiratory diseases like asthma. As the climate changes, unhealthy air pollution will get worse. Here 's how:
Ozone smog forms when pollution from vehicles, factories, and other sources reacts with sunlight and heat. Increasing temperatures speed this process and result in more smog. Added to the mix are ragweed and other allergens in the air -- which are expected to worsen as rising carbon dioxide levels cause plants to produce more pollen. Also, as dry areas get dryer, wildfire risks go up and smoke from burning landscapes intensifies poor air quality.

iStockCarbon pollution from vehicles, power plants and other sources drives climate change, increasing ozone smog, allergens, and sending health-harming particles and toxics into the air.
Exposure to increased smog, pollen pollution, and wildfire smoke puts a wide range of people at risk for irritated eyes, throats and lung damage (the U.S. EPA likened breathing ozone to getting a

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