Oil refineries increase air pollution by 40% when producing heavy oil
Interesting Air Pollution Facts
Human Caused Air Pollution
Interesting Air Pollution Facts: The first fact is that some air pollution is natural. Volcanoes, dust storms, and forest fires all pollute the air.
Interesting Air Pollution Facts - Natural Air Pollution
Volcanoes put so much ash and gases in the air that the sun is blocked at times, and Earth's temperature lowered. This happened in 1991 after the Mount Pinatubo eruption. It has happened many other times in history.
Volcanoes sometimes leak carbon dioxide gas that can suffocate anybody unlucky enough to be near one of the leaking vents. This occurred at Mammoth Mountain in California.
Anyone near a forest fire knows how bad the air is. Forest fire smoke can locally block
out the sun. Dust storms can be severe on the lungs too. In desert regions, high winds
put tons of particulate matter into the air very quickly.
Methane, a potent greenhouse gas from decaying peat and other organic matter, enters
the atmosphere all the time.
Except for people setting forest fires, there's not a lot to do about natural air pollution
except filtering the air or getting out of the way.
What Country has the worst Air Quality?
India
Air pollution is not political. It is in countries the world over. Air pollution from China has
been tracked to the Central Valley of California!
In the Philippines, auto sales are up close to 30%. Correspondingly, so is air pollution.
Some 2 million cars in Manila now cause 80% of air pollution there.
In India, air pollution is believed to cause 527,700 fatalities a year.
The European Environmental Agency reports that 50,000 British Citizens die every year
from bad air there.
Tailpipe emissions account for 70 percent of the air pollution in major Chinese cities
Studies have estimated that the number of people killed annually from air pollution in
the US could be over 50,000.
In Southern California alone, 5,000 annual premature deaths are attributed to pollution from short-haul diesel trucks!
Air pollution has been around a long time. The Great Smog of 1952 in London killed at
least 8,000 people.
World Health Organization: The European Union could save up to 161 billion euros a
year by reducing deaths caused by air pollution.
Over 80% of lung damaging particulate matter in Cities - PPM10 comes from cars,
trucks, buses, and other vehicles on the road.
Air pollution around cities is clearly visible from space.
Air pollution in large cities is now the worst. It is estimated that 750,000 people die
prematurely in China each year, mainly from air pollution in large cities.
Electric vehicles stir up dust like other vehicles, but they do not emit gases like other
vehicles
On days when pollution levels are up, it is better not to go out and exercise.
Recent work by MIT researchers shows that some 13,000 British citizens pass away early due to air pollution from vehicles and power plants. That averages to 35 per day.
In California, air pollution kills more people (25,000 per year) than car crashes, and
costs around $200 Million in medical expenses.
In China about 300,000 people die yearly from lung cancer and heart disease directly
related to air pollution.
In places where the pollution is real thick, people need to wear masks.
Back in the day, some 20,000 were killed by fallout from some 2,000 nuclear tests.
Strong perfume can be as bad to breathe as cigarette smoke!
As light crude oil gets scarcer, heavy oil and tar sands get more and more produced.
Producing heavy crude increases air pollution up to 40% over producing lighter crude!
It has recently been shown in the Journal Lancet that traffic-induced air pollution
increases the risk of heart attack for anybody breathing that air.
Global CO2 emissions actually dropped 1.3 percent in 2009, as reported in the The
journal of Environmental Research Letters. However, emissions in China and India
went up 9 and 6 percent respectively. The price of progress.
By 2050, air pollution will kill an estimated 6 million people per year.
On the plus side
Air in the USA, at least, has improved a lot since the 1970 Clean Air Act went into
effect.
Measured levels of all major air pollution elements: ozone, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter and lead, have dropped a major amount
since 1970. Carbon monoxide (CO) levels are down more than 70 percent.
Regarding diesel pollution and heart attacks: It has recently been discovered that a
particulate filter on the emitting vehicle can reduce particulate pollution up to 98
percent. Wow, this is good news if vehicle owners care to pony up the $2,000 to
$7,000 per filter.
