Acid Rain

Da Kyung Lee
Mr. Youell
Science
3/19/2015

Acid Rain

It is common thing to see many buildings cracking, plants dying, and dirty water in river or ocean around us. These are affected by acid rain and it is very harmful for both natural environment and human beings. So now I am going to talk about what acid rain is and its effects, causes, and remedy.

Acid rain is rain that has been acidic by certain pollutants in the air containing higher than normal amounts of nitric or sulfuric acids. Generally if the pH of rain is less than 5 or 6, we say it is acid rain. There are two types of deposition in acid rain called wet deposition and dry deposition. Wet deposition is the rain, fog, snow and other forms of precipitation. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, if the acid chemicals in the air are blown into areas where the weather is wet, the acids can fall down in the form of rain, snow, for, or mist. And it badly affects to plants and animals that live on the ground or in the ocean. Dry deposition is the acidic gases and particles in the atmosphere. After acid chemicals become incorporated into dust or smoke, they fall down to the ground through dry deposition. So, if wet and dry deposition mix together, it becomes acid rain that seriously affects many living things by making them acidic.

Figure 1: How Acid Rain works

The effects of acid rain are mostly seen in the water, environments such as lakes, streams, and marshes, or even on the street. Especially aquatic habitats are the most impacted because acid deposition directly falls into the water. Since this happens, many marine animals and plants living in the water die. Among them, fish are one that is very weak at acids. If we see the figure 2, we can notice how cruelly acid rain kills them. Acid rain also kills trees. According to About education, they say acid rain can damage the tissues of plants and make them stop growing. They also add that acid rain destroys the soil because it disrupts soil nutrients and kills microorganisms in the soil. Buildings where we live also get effects by acid rain. Because acid rain has an ability to destroy stones, especially limestone. This is why we can frequently see the buildings cracking. Such as these, effects of acid rain are really powerful and bad. If these continually happen a lot of time, we would lose our natural environment and without the nature, we would live in awful life which isn't able to imagine. 

Figure 2: Water Pollution by Acid Rain

The causes of acid rain are mainly because of human activity, industrial process, traffic and the consumption of fuel, and volcanoes. Because acid rain is made by a chemical reaction that begins when compounds like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are released into the air. As air pollution is consisted by many different chemicals, it is closely related to the cause of acid rain. Human activity like using electricity too much causes acid rain because it is wasting energy which makes air pollution. Furthermore, various chemicals that humans have released every day are quite huge. Industrial process and fuel from traffic and consumption are also very bad for acid rain due to its gases of chemicals. According to USGS, they say magma from volcanoes contains dissolved gases that are released into the atmosphere during eruptions. Therefore, the volcanic gases containing chemicals become a cause of acid rain. 

Figure 3: Industry process causes Acid Rain

Since energy production creates large amounts of pollutants that cause acid rain, we can do something easy to economize the energy. First remedy is to turn off lights, computers, televisions, video games, and other electrical equipment when we are not using them at the moment. Just by turning off them, we can keep a lot of energy. Secondly, we can take public transportation such as buses and trains instead of cars, or we can walk on foot or ride bicycle if it's short distance. Because driving cars and trucks produces large amounts of nitrogen oxides. Lastly, the most important remedy is to understand the problems of acid rain and try to economize the energy with right attitude in order to make less acid rain. Even the trivial things will make a huge difference in the future.

Figure 4: Electricity off what we don't need

Bibliography:

- http://www.epa.gov/acidrain/index.html

- http://www.epa.gov/acidrain/education/site_students/index.html
- http://www.geo.mtu.edu/volcanoes/hazards/primer/gas.html
- http://geography.about.com/od/globalproblemsandissues/a/acidrain.htm