Acid Rain

Acid rain is rain that is more acidic than normal. Acid rain is a complicated problem. Caused by air pollution, acid rain's spread and damage involves weather, chemistry, soil, and the life cycles of plants and animals on the land and from acid rain in the water.

Scientists have discovered that air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels is the major cause of acid rain. Power plants and factories burn coal and oil. Power plants use that coal and oil to produce the electricity we need to heat and light our homes and to run our electric appliances. We also burn natural gas, coal, and oil to heat our homes.

The smoke and fumes from burning fossil fuels rise into the atmosphere and combine with the moisture in the air to form acid rain. The main chemicals in air pollution that create acid rain are sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Acid rain usually forms high in the clouds where sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides react with water, oxygen, and oxidants. This forms a mild solution of sulfuric acid and nitric acid. Sunlight increases the rate of most of these reactions. Rainwater, snow, fog, and other forms of precipitation containing those mild solutions of sulfuric and nitric acids fall to the earth as acid rain.

Water moves through every living plant and animal, streams, lakes, and oceans in the hydrologic cycle. In that cycle, water evaporates from the land and sea into the atmosphere. Water in the atmosphere then condenses to form clouds. Clouds release the water back to the earth as rain, snow, or fog. When water droplets form and fall to the earth they pick up particles and chemicals that float in the air. Even clean, unpolluted air has some particles such as dust or pollen. Clean air also contains naturally occurring gases such as carbon dioxide. The interaction between the water droplets and the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and to a lesser extent, from chlorine which is derived from the salt in the sea, gives rain an average pH of about 5.6, making even clean rain slightly acidic. Other natural sources of acids and bases in the atmosphere may lower or raise the pH of unpolluted rain. However, when rain contains pollutants, especially sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, the rain water can become very acidic.

Acid rain does not account for all of the acidity that falls back to earth from pollutants. About half the acidity in the atmosphere falls back to the earth through dry deposition as gases and dry particles. The wind blows these acidic particles and gases onto buildings, cars, homes and trees. In some instances, these gases and particles can eat away the things on which they settle. Dry deposited gases and particles are sometimes washed from trees and other surfaces by rainstorms. When that happens, the runoff water adds those acids to the acid rain, making the combination more acidic than the falling rain alone. The combination of acid rain plus dry deposited acid is called acid deposition.

The chemical reactions that change air pollution to acid rain can take from several hours to several days. Years ago, when smokestacks were only a few stories high, pollution from smokestacks usually stayed near the ground and settled on land nearby. This caused unhealthy conditions for plants and animals near the smokestacks. To reduce this pollution, the government passed a law permitting the construction of very tall smokestacks. At that time, people thought that if the pollution were sent high into the air it would no longer be a problem. Scientists now know that this is incorrect. Sending pollution high into the sky increases the time that the pollution stays in the air. The longer the pollution is in the air, the greater are the chances that the pollutants will form acid rain. In addition, the wind can carry these pollutants for hundreds of miles before they become joined with water droplets to form acid rain. For that reason, acid rain can also be a problem in areas far from the polluting smokestacks. Dry deposition is usually more abundant near the cities and industrial areas where the pollutants are released.

There are also natural sources of acids such as volcanoes, natural geysers and hot springs. Nature has developed ways of recycling these acids by absorbing and breaking them down. These natural acids contribute to only a small portion of the acidic rainfall in the world today. In small amounts, these acids actually help dissolve nutrients and minerals from the soil so that trees and other plants can use them for food. The large amounts of acids produced by human activities overload this natural acidity.

Acid rain is poorly understood and we will probably spend billions on research ending up with two opposing groups of experts. One of the biggest money contributors

to our congressmen is a lobby group dedicated to defeating or diluting any acid rain controls.

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