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Pollution
Pollution is the process of giving out contaminants such as smoke and carbon dioxide, and too much of a certain product such as light, heat and sound that both cause harm to the environment.
8,185 Questions
Won't cryonics overpopulate the Earth?
Concerning overpopulation, with the tiny numbers of people interested in cryonics, it is unlikely that cryonics will be a significant contributer to population. Advanced technologies like fusion and solar power farms in space that microwave energy to earth could mean that energy production is far less polluting than it is today. Vast amounts of non-polluting energy could make food production more cheap and easy. There is vast amount of space on earth for more population. (Oceans have not begun to be inhabited.) Cheap energy could also make space more accessible, and there is ample room in the solar system for trillions upon trillions of people. Cheap non-polluting energy would mean there is nothing to fear from more population. And if each person is a producer rather than a consumer, greater population means that there are more people to contribute to the well-being of all mankind
How does rainwater become acid?
Rainwater becomes acidic when contaminated water evaporates into clouds and those clouds eventually rain. Water becomes contaminated mainly because toxic, biological, or other waste material are dumped into a body of water like a pond or lake.
Why does oxygen come out of a car exhaust?
Oxygen which comes out of a car exhaust is a product of reaction in the catalytic converter. In the catalytic converter, oxides of nitrogen undergo reactions to form less harmful nitrogen gas and oxygen, which are then expelled through the exhaust system.
How can you stop farmers from polluting America?
i don't think its the farmers, its the cows. their burps are like pollution. so the only way to stop them is to kill all the cows. but that's not nice.
Actually, less then ten (10) percent of this "global warming" is car or animal related. The Earth goes through NATURAL cycles of warming and cooling. Proof has been found in the poler ice caps to support this theory! The Media doesn't want to admit it though...
What kind of weathring happens to a rock exposed to acid rain why?
Chemical Weathering.. because as rocks exposed to acid rains like limestones, it slowly dissolve and change into a new form
Is irritation in eyes is caused by the PAN pollutant?
Yes, irritation in eyes, which is observed in periods of strong photosmog, is caused by Peroxyacetyl Nitrate (PAN).
What non biodegradable items that you use could be replaced biodegradable?
Many non-biodegradable items can be replaced with biodegradable alternatives. For instance, single-use plastic bags can be swapped for reusable cloth or biodegradable bags made from materials like cornstarch. Plastic straws can be replaced with paper, bamboo, or metal straws, while plastic utensils can be substituted with compostable options made from plant-based materials. Additionally, traditional plastic food containers can be replaced with biodegradable options made from materials like sugarcane or palm leaves.
Which irreversible effect of both deforestation and water pollution on the environment is the?
extinction of species
What is the most environmentally-friendly method of travel?
Walking, bicycle, row boat, sail boat, solar powered car (hopefully, one day in the near future)
What atmospheric pollutants are made by power stations?
Mostly sulphur and carbon dioxode comes out of a power station that burns fossil fuels. But there are some other gases
Which diseases are caused by eating contaminated food and water?
Campylobacter is a genus of bacteria that are a major cause of gastroenteritis throughout the world. Infection occurs mainly following consumption of contaminated undercooked poultry or contaminated water.
The most common symptoms of campylobacter infection include diarrhoea, abdominal pain, fever, headache, nausea and vomiting. Symptoms usually start 2-5 days after infection, and last for 3-6 days.
Cholera is an acute intestinal infection caused by ingestion of food or water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. It has a short incubation period and produces an enterotoxin that causes a copious, painless, watery diarrhoea that can quickly lead to severe dehydration and death if treatment is not promptly given. Vomiting also occurs in most patients.
Most persons infected with V. cholerae do not become ill, although the bacterium is present in their faeces for 7-14 days. When illness does occur, about 80-90% of episodes are of mild or moderate severity and are difficult to distinguish clinically from other types of acute diarrhoea. Less than 20% of ill persons develop typical cholera with signs of moderate or severe dehydration.
Cholera remains a global threat and is one of the key indicators of social development. While the disease no longer poses a threat to countries with minimum standards of hygiene, it remains a challenge to countries where access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation cannot be guaranteed. Almost every developing country faces cholera outbreaks or the threat of a cholera epidemic.
Hepatitis A, caused by infection with the Hepatitis A virus (HAV), has an incubation period of approximately 28 days (range: 15-50 days). HAV replicates in the liver and is shed in high concentrations in feces from 2 weeks before to 1 week after the onset of clinical illness. HAV infection produces a self-limited disease that does not result in chronic infection or chronic liver disease.
However, 10%-15% of patients might experience a relapse of symptoms during the 6 months after acute illness. Acute liver failure from Hepatitis A is rare (overall case-fatality rate: 0.5%). The risk for symptomatic infection is directly related to age, with >80% of adults having symptoms compatible with acute viral hepatitis and the majority of children having either asymptomatic or unrecognized infection. Antibody produced in response to HAV infection persists for life and confers protection against reinfection.
HAV infection is primarily transmitted by the fecal-oral route, by either person-to-person contact or consumption of contaminated food or water. Although viremia occurs early in infection and can persist for several weeks after onset of symptoms, bloodborne transmission of HAV is uncommon. HAV occasionally might be detected in saliva in experimentally infected animals, but transmission by saliva has not been demonstrated.Salmonellosis is an infection with bacteria called Salmonella. Salmonella germs have been known to cause illness for over 100 years. They were discovered by an American scientist named Salmon, for whom they are named.
Most persons infected with Salmonella develop diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps 12 to 72 hours after infection. The illness usually lasts 4 to 7 days, and most persons recover without treatment. However, in some persons, the diarrhea may be so severe that the patient needs to be hospitalized. In these patients, the Salmonella infection may spread from the intestines to the blood stream, and then to other body sites and can cause death unless the person is treated promptly with antibiotics. The elderly, infants, and those with impaired immune systems are more likely to have a severe illness.Shigellosis is an infectious disease caused by a group of bacteria called Shigella. Most who are infected with Shigella develop diarrhea, fever, and stomach cramps starting a day or two after they are exposed to the bacteria. The diarrhea is often bloody. Shigellosis usually resolves in 5 to 7 days. Persons with shigellosis in the United States rarely require hospitalization. A severe infection with high fever may be associated with seizures in children less than 2 years old. Some persons who are infected may have no symptoms at all, but may still pass the Shigella bacteria to others.
Typhoid fever is a life-threatening illness caused by the bacterium Salmonella Typhi. In the United States about 400 cases occur each year, and 75% of these are acquired while traveling internationally. Typhoid fever is still common in the developing world, where it affects about 21.5 million persons each year.
Typhoid fever can be prevented and can usually be treated with antibiotics. If you are planning to travel outside the United States, you should know about typhoid fever and what steps you can take to protect yourself.
Salmonella Typhi lives only in humans. Persons with typhoid fever carry the bacteria in their bloodstream and intestinal tract. In addition, a small number of persons, called carriers , recover from typhoid fever but continue to carry the bacteria. Both ill persons and carriers shed S. Typhi in their feces (stool).
You can get typhoid fever if you eat food or drink beverages that have been handled by a person who is shedding S. Typhi or if sewage contaminated with S. Typhi bacteria gets into the water you use for drinking or washing food. Therefore, typhoid fever is more common in areas of the world where handwashing is less frequent and water is likely to be contaminated with sewage.
Once S. Typhi bacteria are eaten or drunk, they multiply and spread into the bloodstream. The body reacts with fever and other signs and symptoms.
These diseases are almost a certainty when people are getting their water from natural sources. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who will not follow basic hygiene when obtaining water, disposing of waste or cooking food.
Is it easier to get fossil fuels than other energy sources?
Yes. The only other real power source is nuclear today.
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Another view
No, fossil fuels are not easier to get than other energy sources. The wind blows and the sun shines whether we take advantage of it or not. Hauling firewood is easier than digging coal, and drilling for geothermal heat is not more difficult than drilling for oil.
It is conceptually easier to get fossil fuels than to use biomass, and it is conceptually easier to use fossil fuels in large central generating stations than it is to combine hydro, geothermal, biomass, wind, solar, pumped energy storage, and whatever other sources might be available into a distributed generating system. But the question of what is easier might be most clearly addressed in terms of monetary costs and environmental effects because in general, the costs are related to difficulty.
The job of fueling a tractor when all you have is firewood may be difficult for most people to envision, but is easier than you might think. Wood can be gasified very cleanly, and the product catalyzed into just about any alkane you might want. Most people have no idea what an alkane is, but they recognize the names of some of them, for example, propane, butane, and octane. You can get a liter of oil from five kilos of wood, about 120 gallons of diesel oil from a cord of firewood, and the product is superior in several ways to the fossil fuel. Alternatively, wood gas can be used directly in the engine as fuel, though this usually means gasification is done on the vehicle, which is rather inconvenient.
In a model community, where distributed electrical generation is done, it can be combined with heating, and the combination can be very efficient. While more people have to be employed locally to provide electricity and heat, more contractors and electricians need to be employed to build and maintain the system, and more farmers and foresters need to be employed to provide fuel, this is quite good for the local economy and actually keeps costs down. The efficiency of some internal combustion engines is rated at above 48% for electrical generation, and the combined efficiency with heat capture is rated at 90%. When this is done with biomass, the need to deal with pollutants is largely eliminated, and the carbon footprint is quite small - similar to that of wind and solar.
This is not a dream vision, but a reality that has been achieved on a community wide basis. The town of Güssing, Austria, has converted entirely to renewable energy, starting in the early 1990s. In the process of doing so, it the town went from a situation of severe unemployment to having an overabundance of open jobs. Its cash flow on energy went from paying out six million euros each year to producing fourteen million euros worth of power, much of which was sold elsewhere. Their forests are now viewed as an important resource, are being very carefully maintained. I should think the current situation, using no fossil fuels or nuclear, is quite a lot easier than the alternative of using them. There is a link to the renewable energy section of an article on Güssing below.
In early 2011, the US Department of Energy released its projections for consumer energy costs for 2016. The least expensive source with a small carbon footprint was projected to be combined cycle natural gas with carbon capture and sequestration, a fossil fuel. Wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass, all of which have similarly small carbon footprints, were all projected to cost less than nuclear, which possibly has the largest carbon footprint of all of these. These costs did not account for the costs of managing nuclear waste, nor did it account for the potential cost of nuclear disaster. They also do not take into account the fact that renewable energy is a local resource that keeps the cash flow within the local community, improving the local economy and increasing financial security.
Right now, in Vermont, the least expensive source of electricity is methane coming from a landfill. If it were not burned, it would escape to the atmosphere, where its greenhouse gas effect would be 21 times as great as the carbon dioxide it is burned into.
Where was the President at the time of the explosion of the BP 2010 gulf oil rig?
President Barack Obama is the President of the USA since Jan. 2009.
What happens when rain water weathers a gravestone?
If the gravestone is a carbonate rock like limestone the rain will eventually erode the stone away as rain water is slightly acidic. Old tombstone are often illegible because of this as all the raised lettering is washed away. Alternately if the rain seeps into any cracks and freezes the stone will split or pall.
If your dog pees near or on your well will it be contaminated?
Your well should be drawing water from far beneath you, 100 feet or more. Even a more shallow well will not be contaminated by something like dog urine. It will not penetrate far enough down to affect the well.
Your question is quite simple. However, there is no average tanker or tanker oil spill. Nor is there an average oil well blow out. Both are relatively rare events.
Capacity ranges of tankers ranges from 10,000 to 500,000 deadweight tonnes. Now, their carrying capacity is in terms of weight. However using a standard of West Texas Crude (39.7 degrees API) I can convert 1 metric tonne to 7.6 barrels, so this becomes a capacity range of 76,000 barrels to 3.8 million barrels. A pretty large range.
As stated in the related link on oil tankers, a very large crude carrier, (VLCC), capacity is approximately 2 million barrels of oil. Now, this doesn't mean that an accident with a VLCC will release this volume of oil. As shown in the attached link on oil spills, there have been only 3 huge tanker accidents in the last 43 years (since 1970), with spills in the range of 252,000 to 287,000 DWT (approx. 1.9 to 2.2 million barrels).
The highly publicized Exxon-Valdez at 10.9 million gallons or 260,000 million barrels, is comparatively much smaller than the huge and rare tanker spills
Most tanker oil spills are very small (less than 7 tonnes or 53 barrels) due to operational errors. In the last 43 years, there has been a declining trend in the number of oil tankers spills. (see related link). The worst accident in 20 years, spilled 62,000 tonnes.
Now, the quantity of oil spilled from a blown out (or wild) well, may be difficult to quantify. For the April 2010 blow out, the total quantity discharged into the gulf will be unknown until the well is killed. But, let us suppose (no harm in this), that the containment dome fails, and we have 120 days of flow at 5,000 barrels per day, then 600,000 barrels will enter the Gulf, more than twice the volume that Exxon-Valdez discharged, but hardly a record spill when compared with tanker spills.
The volume spilled is of course important. In making comparisons, I would think it is equally important to look at where the spills occurred, (near or far from natural important coastal habitats) how successful skimming, containment, and other control actions were, and if in the end, better safety procedures could be implemented to prevent spills.
My point is that spills are difficult to generalize. Sorry for such a long explanation. See related links.
What effect has the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on the environment below surface?
The Gulf of Mexico is the #1 breeding area in the world for sharks. It might decrease population of sharks. Many fish will die. Some endangered species will become even rarer, and some species on the edge of endangerment will now be listed on the "Endangered Species List,".
There is a picture of the oil spill on the Related Links section.
3 causes effects and sollutions of forest denudation of air pollution?
i want the details about pollutions
Environments range from monocultures where one plant or animal predominates (like a corn field) to fully diversified environments which exhibit many niches for a number of species (a woodlands forest).
In a diverse environment plant growth occurs at several physical levels (close to the ground, mid height and tall trees. There are wet and dry areas. Animals are present that can feed on several of the plant species aslthough specific animals may prefer one species over the other.
What is the role of teachers to protect environment?
Teachers have the same roles and responsibilities of every citizen of the world but teachers who teach science or about the world should inform and persuade their students to help in protecting the environment.
