Acid Rain

Valeska MengertGlobal Geography 12

Mrs. Aliphat

Acid Rain: How it’s caused

• When pollutants like sulfur and nitrogen emissions combine with water vapor, sunlight and oxygen, a diluted “soup” of sulfuric and nitric acids are produced.

• In some regions hydrochloric acid is produced which can also lead to acid rain.

How Acid Rain is formed

These pollutants are being emitted into our atmosphere, destroying forests, fish, lakes, buildings and stained glass in the industrialized parts of the world, such as Europe and the U.S.

Example of tree death

Destruction caused by Acid Rain

• Acid smog is destroying world heritage buildings in Krakow, Poland by weakening walls and roofs.

• It is biting into marble monuments in Athens. Experts say more damage has been done in the past 25 years than in the previous 2400.

• It is eating away at Cathedrals in Germany.• Europe’s stained glass windows are fading.• A quarter of Sweden’s lakes are acidified, 4000 of them

are so acidic that fish can no longer live in them.• More than 300 lakes in Ontario have a pH level of less

than 5 (most fish die at a pH level of 5, none can survive in a pH of 4)

pH Values

• Naturally acidic rain fall has a pH level of 5.6

• Pollution increases the natural acidity up to 100 times.

• pH levels in central Europe are 4.3 or lower.

• In Areas such as Japan, Central Europe, Scandinavia and North America have an annual pH level as low as 3.5.

pH levels of rain fall

• Norway experiences rainfall that is as acidic as lemon juice (pH level of 2)

• In Pennsylvania the rain is as acidic as vinegar (pH level or 2)

• West Virginia has suffered from rainfall almost as acidic as battery acid (pH level of 0)

• Sulfuric acid has a pH level of 1.

Facts

• Acid Shock happens sometimes in the spring when the snow which also contains acid melts into the body of water

• Acid rain doesn’t just affect our water but our agriculture as well. Plants need water and will absorb the water from the ground as well as the sulfuric and nitric acid.

• The costs of acid rain damage are approximately $20 million a year. That does not include the cost of dead forests, damaged crop and acidic lakes.

Works Cited

• “Acid Rain” Atlas of the Environment by Geoffrey Lean and Don Hinrichsen

• http://www1.dasan.de/j//medien/bilder/umwelt/waldsterben9702.jpg

• http://www.newint.org/issue114/pics/rainpic.gif• http://fizyka.phys.put.poznan.pl/~pieransk/Physics%20Ar

ound%20Us/Rain%20drops%2002.jpg• http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hall/9111/DOC

S.HTML