Effect Of Acid Rain On Humans

Most importantly, acid rain can affect health of a human being. It can harm us through theatmosphere or through the soil from which our food is grown and eaten from. Acid rain causes toxic metals to break loose from their natural chemical compounds. Toxic metals themselves are dangerous, but if they are combined with other elements, they are harmless.They release toxic metals that might be absorbed by the drinking water, crops, or animals that human consume. These foods that are consumed could cause nerve damage to children or severe brain damage or death. Scientists believe that one metal, aluminum, is suspected tolerate to Alzheimer’s disease. One of the serious side effects of acid rain on human is respiratory problems.

 The sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emission gives risk to respiratory problems such as dry coughs, asthma, headaches, eye, nose, and throat irritation.Polluted rainfall is especially harmful to those who suffer from asthma or those who have hard time breathing. But even healthy people can have their lungs damaged by acid air pollutants. Acid rain can aggravate a person’s ability to breathe and may increase disease which could lead to death. In 1991, the United States and Canada signed an air quality agreement. Ever since that time, both countries have taken actions to reduce sulphur dioxide emission. The United States agree to reduce their annual sulphur dioxide emission by about ten million tons by the year 2000. A year before the agreement, the Clean Air Pact Amendment tried to reduce nitrogen oxide by two million tons. This program focused on the source that emits nitrogen oxide, automobiles and coal-fired electric utility boilers. Reducing nitrogen oxide emission in a utility plant starts during the combustion phase. A procedure called over fire air is used to redirect a fraction of the total air in the combustion chamber.

To reduce sulphur dioxide emission utility plants are required to do several steps by the Clean Air Act Amendment.Before combustion, these utilities plants have to go through a process call coal cleaning. This process is performed gravitationally. Meaning, it is successful in removing pyritic sulphur due to its high specific gravity, but it is unsuccessful in removing chemically bound organic sulphur. This cleaning process is only limited by the percent of pyritic sulphur in the coal. Coal with high amount of pyritic sulphur is coal in higher demands. Another way to reduce sulphur dioxide before combustion is by burning coal with low sulphur content. Low sulphur content coals are called bituminous coal. This process in reducing sulphur dioxide is very expensive due to the high demand of bituminous coal.Acid rain is an issue that can not be over looked. This phenomenon destroys anything it touches or interacts with it. When acid rain damages the forest or the environment it affects humans in the long run. Once forests are totally destroyed and lakes are totally polluted animals begin to decrease because of lack of food and shelter. If all the animals, which are our food source, die out, humans too would die out.