Acid Rain

Essay by JOSEPH PETRULLIHigh School, 11th gradeA+, December 1994

download word file, 7 pages 3.3 1 reviews

Downloaded 101 times

NONE NONE

INTRODUCTION: Acid rain is a great problem in our world. It causes fish

and plants to die in our waters. As well it causes harm to our own race as

well, because we eat these fish, drink this water and eat these plants. It

is a problem that we must all face together and try to get rid of. However

acid rain on it's own is not the biggest problem. It cause many other

problems such as aluminum poisoning. Acid Rain is deadly.

WHAT IS ACID RAIN?

Acid rain is all the rain, snow, mist etc that falls from the sky onto

our planet that contains an unnatural acidic. It is not to be confused with

uncontaminated rain that falls, for that rain is naturally slightly acidic.

It is caused by today's industry. When products are manufactured many

chemicals are used to create it. However because of the difficulty and cost

of properly disposing of these products they are often emitted into the

atmosphere with little or no treatment.

The term was first considered to be important about 20 years ago when

scientists in Sweden and Norway first believed that acidic rain may be

causing great ecological damage to the planet. The problem was that by the

time that the scientist found the problem it was already very large.

Detecting an acid lake is often quite difficult. A lake does not become

acid over night. It happens over a period of many years, some times

decades. The changes are usually to gradual for them to be noticed early.

At the beginning of the 20th century most rivers/lakes like the river

Tovdal in Norway had not yet begun to die. However by 1926 local inspectors

were noticing that many of the lakes were beginning to show signs of...