Expert: Rob Gibson - 11/16/2004

Question
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Followup To
Question -
i live in the united states, Illinois to be exact. anyway, i am working on a highschool project, and i am required for this project to get expert imput on my topic, and my topic is air pollution. so i am asking if you could tell me some details about it, new discoveries, the pro's and con's, and anything else you would like to add. it would be greatly appreciated. The project is due on tuesday (noverber 23rd)
Thank you - Benjamin
Answer -
Hi Benjamin
May I respectfully suggest that you start your project by doing some research yourself.  There are some pretty good web sites that they're not least the US EPA which should help you develop your themes.

I  use the Google search engine to help me when I undertake this sort of research.

Generally speaking research on air quality is best structured in the following way:-
Start off with sources;
Continue with effects, on things like health and vegetation
and then finish with
controls so you are looking at things like catalytic converters on cars and flue gas de-supherisation etc.

I hope this helps.

Regards -- Rob Gibson

Yes, i have researched myself, but it is a requirment that we get an experts point of view on air pollution, and how it is going today, better, worse, ets. and thoes webpages helped us for our research too. thank you.

Answer
Benjamin

It is a bit difficult for me to say whether the air pollution is getting better or worse because much of the pollution we look at its very local to the district that is studied.

In my area things were getting better until the year 2003 when weather conditions made things very much worse.

I hope your research has shown that there are several different types of pollution so, certain species such as nitrogen dioxide may improve that they would be a consequential effect on the level of ozone i.e. a worsening because the two things are  chemically interrelated.

The other thing you can say is that the type of pollution that we experience in the United Kingdom is different now to what it was 50 years ago.  That is because the major source was then the burning of coal in open fires for heat giving rise to high levels of sulphur dioxide (which is now of negligible concentration).  Now, the major problem is nitrogen dioxide from road vehicles.  I have no idea if the situation is replicated in Illinois.

One final point.  The pollution level may improve over a period of time but then some bright spark may come along and decide that it is necessary to build a new runway at the local airport.  This in itself is a major pollution source and whilst as I say, the pollution level may be dropping over time the development may push the level back above the standard!

So as you can see, the situation is not straightforward with respect to local air pollution.  However if you are considering global pollution from carbon dioxide, I would say that the situation is getting very much worse across the world, largely because the biggest producer, that being the United States, refuses to accept global warming as an issue and refuses to sign the Kyoto agreement.  Since Mr Putin (questionable spelling) signed up on behalf of the Russians the only other country of any significance not to sign is Australia.

I hope this helps -- Rob Gibson