TESTING AIR PURITYPrepared by: Krzysztof Zegzuła, Kinga Gorzała, Monika Górska

Air pollution

The air pollution is the main reason of global threat danger of natural environment. Carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulates are the most often reason of air pollution.

Sources of air pollution

All substances that pollute air, gas, solid or liquid. Air pollution are the most dangerous of all pollutants, because they are mobile and can contaminate large areas of virtually all components of the environment.

Reasons of air pollution are:

Chemical conversion of fuels, extraction and transportation of raw

materials, chemical industry, Refinery, Metallurgical, Cement, storage of raw materials and waste, automotive

Natural reasons of air pollution:

volcanoes eruption, wind erosion of rocks, forest and prairie fires, cosmic dust, some biological processes.

Effects of Air Pollution

Air pollutants are absorbed by humans primarily during respiration. Contribute to the formation of respiratory diseases and reproduction disorders and allergies. The cultural environment of human pollution causing corrosion of metals and building materials. Act negatively on the world of plants, disrupting the processes of photosynthesis, transpiration and respiration. Secondary skażają water and soil. On a global scale have an influence on climate change.

The assessment of air dust

Information

Dust - solid particles or liquid droplets suspended in the air, reaching the size from 0.0001 to 0.1 mm. Dust can be of natural or technological.

The main source of dust is nature itself and the processes occurring in it, among which include flowering seed plants, soil erosion, the release of dust sea salt.

Source of technical dust are motor vehicles, hearth stoves, industry. Technical dust causes stronger and more negative effects on living organisms causing cancer, changes in the respiratory tract, restriction the process of photosynthesis.

Experiment

At the end of September and October, our group suspended the jars in several places, at different distances (3 meters, 6 meters and 8 meters) from a busy road at a height of about 2 meters in order to assess the degree of air dust . After 4 days jars were collected and rinsed with distilled water (about 200 ml). The resulting suspension was filtered. We compared the amount of solid that is left on the filter. Measurements were made in three.

Filters after two measurements

The results of three measurements

The first measurement

Experiment

The degree of dirtiness of the filter is defined by the scale: 0 – no sludge, 1 – small amount of sludge, 2 – distinct sludge, 3 – large sludge, large amount of solid.

Table of measurements

Number of measuring point

Amount of sludge

Sample number

I II II

I (3 meters) 3 2 2

II (6 meters) 2 2 1

III (8 meters) 1 1 1

Conclusions

Most of the pollutants were found in the filters from jars suspended from the nearest street. When the distance was greater, the pollution was less. This is a result of large emissions from vehicles.

Experiment has shown that Tarnobrzeg does not belong to a very polluted cities.