The Pros And Cons Of Air Pollution

The Clean Air Act is a United States federal law designed to control air pollution on a national level.[1] It is one of the United States' first and most influential modern environmental laws, and one of the most comprehensive air quality laws in the world.[2][3] As with many other major U.S. federal environmental statutes, it is administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in coordination with state, local, and tribal governments.[4] Its implementing regulations are codified at 40 C.F.R. Subchapter C, Parts 50-97.

Improved air quality wasn’t a subject of national concern until the mid 1900s. After decades of coal burning, unregulated gas emissions from cars and the excessive burning of fossil fuels, people started noticing bad air quality as a hazard to their lives. Over several decades, after seeing the costly effects air pollution was having on the environment and people’s health, interest groups like the Friends of The Earth club and the influences of Theodore Roosevelt and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring finally came together to persuade the government to enforce legislation that would reduce air pollution. Because of these efforts, the policies of the Clean Air Act of 1963 and the Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Act of 1965, that aimed to control air pollution and raise air quality standards, helped create the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on December 2, 1970. Since then, the EPA has passed more air quality improvement acts, and amendments to previous acts passed, to increase restrictions on air pollutants, with their main policy concern being the Clean Air Act. Improved air quality acts imposed by the EPA have been successful in cleaning the United States’ air quality by reducing ground-level ozone pollution and reducing emissions, allowing for a decrease in pollution related deaths/illnesses and a better standard of living. The EPA, through regulations and the Clean Air Act, has delivered it’s promise to improve air quality in the United States.

Arizona is on the rise as one of the fastest metropolitan areas in the United States of America. In fact, in 2015 Forbes Magazine ranks Phoenix, Arizona as the 11th fastest growing city in the U.S.1 This growth is due the unprecedented resources and growing opportunities in the state of Arizona. With all of these opportunities come more production, which means more emissions from various industries and cars, more fossil fuels burned, and household and farming chemicals added to the sky. All of these are examples of pollution; which is one the sacrifices that comes with being a large city that is emerging. Pollution is defined as the action or process of making land, water, air, etc., dirty and not safe or suitable to use.2 We understand that Phoenix is a rapidly growing city, but they should be able to grow without being a detriment to the environment and health of their citizens. The purpose of my report is to examine the problem of air pollution in Phoenix, Arizona and look at solutions to fix this problem.

Pollution is, without doubt, a serious global issue that needs attention and resolutions. As human technologies improve, water, land, air, noise, and light pollutions are all inevitable. Five and a half million deaths each year is caused by air pollution. More than a million sea birds and mammals are killed each year by water pollution. Hundreds of dolphins and whales are killed each year by noise . These shocking facts all shows the significance of enforcing laws to ensure all people are taking care of our environment by decreasing the amount of pollution.

Today we rely on a majority of fossil fuels with a small percentage of solar or wind energy generation to power our comfortable living. With fossil fuels being our primary source of energy, we are releasing things such as lead into the atmosphere to be inhaled; coal has to be mined causing deforestation and additionally causes water contamination from mining water runoff, the same to be said with fracking.

Look at any ecosystem and there could be multiple forms of contamination—streams full of toxic chemicals from industrial processes, rivers overloaded with nutrients from farms, trash blowing away from landfills, city skies covered in smog. Even landscapes that appear pristine can experience the effects of pollution sources located hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Burning coal changes the surface area; creates cracks in the surface topography. Besides, moving land from the burning area will alter or destroy natural characteristics of the land and impacts the biodiversity. The process of exploitation will create a large amount of wasted rock that strongly affects the neighboring area. Moreover, building the oil rigs strongly influences the marine landscape as well as live of sea creatures.

Imagine the world around us different than how it would be now. Less safe and more risk for diseases. People are finding it harder and harder to breathe the toxic air. It is becoming more unbearable each day. Arctic sea levels have risen. Gas prices are at an all-time high due to oil no longer being as easy to grasp. The world we live in is dark, gloomy, and filled with a life that is worrisome for us, and our future children. It is no longer livable for mankind, but how do we avoid such a troublesome future? What is some sort of solution to help the future of mankind to provide clean air not just for us, but for future generations? One simple solution to prevent this sad future is purchasing an electric vehicle rather than a gasoline vehicle. According to the union of concerned scientists in 2013, transportation contributed to more than half of the carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides, and almost a quarter of the hydrocarbons emitted into our air. This air pollution carries significant risks for human health and the environment. Through clean vehicle and fuel technologies, we can significantly reduce air pollution from our cars and trucks, while cutting projected U.S oil use in half within the next 20 years. Due to such high gasoline prices, the electric vehicles market has grown drastically in the past couple years. Electric cars are quiet, more energy efficient, save you money, and have zero emissions rather than a gasoline car. Therefore, I support the investment of an

For my current events, essay I chose Pollution, I found my article on the National Geographic website. I feel like some different forms of pollution is not taken as seriously as other forms are. Also, the effects of pollution are caused from many different activities that humans take part in. For example, driving cars, and or anything that produces carbon dioxide goes into our air causing damage to our atmosphere. Volcanic eruptions can spew massive amounts of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, sometimes causing cooling that lasts for years’ (Pollution. Para. 4). Areas that pollution effects are Earth’s Atmosphere, Global Warming and the Ozone Layer.

When fossil fuels such as coal and oil are burned to produce power for cities, factories, cars and to heat homes, large amounts of polluting gases are produced.

In the past nine years there have been major developments in the environmental regulations put forth by the United States government concerning fossil fuels. Petroleum, coal and natural gas have been used as the leading fossil fuels for both transportation and energy production. These fossil fuels are reasonably abundant and easy to extract from the earth; moreover, they are easily transported and combusted for energy. Most of the current infrastructure in place for energy production is designed to burn fossil fuels in order to produce electricity. Burning fossil fuels releases vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The buildup of carbon dioxide and other gasses from combustion in the atmosphere results in a phenomenon called global warming.

As a college student who’s majoring in Public Health, I’m writing to urge you to uphold the Clean Air Act and to reject any measures that would block or delay the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from doing its job to protect all Americans from life-threatening air pollutants such as soot, black carbon, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter to name a few. Several bills have been introduced in the House as well as the Senate that would undo important public health protections and I implore you to oppose these measures if they happen to make it far enough to be voted on.

When fossil fuels are burned, a large amount of carbon dioxide is released, which leads to greenhouse gases. In the atmosphere, it absorbs heat and contributes towards the green house effect. This is known as global warming and it has numerous harsh effects on our environment. Another toxic gas released by fossil fuels is sulfur dioxide, which reacts with the moisture present in air to produce sulfuric acid. “…This leads to acid rain, which causes extensive damage to the living as well as nonliving matter on the earth.” Exclaims Eftihia Tzen. Oil is often transported from one place to another by the means of sea route. During this time, oil spills occur on the ocean surface and that causes severe harm to the marine life. Due to mining in the coalmines, landscapes spread over large areas are being destroyed and the land surface cannot be used for any other purpose. Search for newer location for oil reserves is a highly expensive process with a very low success rate. As a result, huge amount of money gets wasted in the process. Fossil fuels are non-renewable source of energy and are being used at a extreme rate. Christopher Koroneos also agrees that the

Fossil fuels are essential to life on earth as we know it today. Our world would certainly be much different if it weren’t for such seemingly simple things such as coal, oil, and natural gas. These basic elements of life on earth may not seem like a major concern to some people until we put into perspective how they have shaped our world today. Civilizations have been built, economies have risen and crumbled, and even wars have been fought over these precious fossil fuels. However, these fossil fuels serve us in ways we may never truly appreciate, as long as we use them as recklessly as we do now. The major entity about fossil fuels is concerning their longevity and permanence in our world, and we all know, they will be around forever.

The way in which we obtain these resources like fossil fuels are destructive to say the least, in most cases. The most common and often heard of method is deep sea drilling and oil fracking. This method of crude oil retrieval has a high rate of pollution, Huffman’s article (@@@) shows the ways in which hydrofracting can contaminate just about everything, from air water and even soil. The method of obtaining the oil in a brief description involves drilling large and deep holes into the ground, multiple chemicals are then pushed into the holes which break apart the bedrock and release the fossil fuel. The contaminants come from the chemicals, which are not able to be extracted out of the soil and they often infiltrate the underground water supplies that lay near. This has been on the news numerous times and VICE actual has a documentary about this. The water supply that is contaminated is often used by small suburban communities / farm lands and other low populated cities. But the effect is that it makes their water so contaminated that they can literally set it on fire, as it has so much ethanol and oil in it. This contamination level of contamination is so destructive that it makes living in these areas almost impossible. Our drive for