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Air pollution

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Air pollution
Causes and Effects of Air Pollution in the Environment

Air pollution is the unwanted change in quality of the earth’satmosphere caused

by the emission of gases and of particulates, which are small particles, which are small

particles of solid matter or droplets of liquid. Polluted air adversely affects the health of

human beings, animals, and plants; it soils damages building and other property; and its

reduces visibility endangering travel by air and on the ground.

Air pollutants are damaging to a wide variety of materials. Steel becomes

corroded two to four times faster in urban and industrial arean than it does in rural

areas, where muck less coal and oil are burned. When particulates are also present, the

rates of corrosion increase rapidly.

There are small particles such as dust, soot, bacteria and pollen grains. These

particles are part of the air that do not do us harm. However, when large amounts of

these materials and another harmful gases get into air, it is no longer healthy or safe for

living things. We say the air is polluted.

Any substance that decreases the purity of the environment is called a pollutant.

Pollutant can be divided into two broad groups- the particulate and the gases.

Particulates will settle out and fall back to earth somewhere near the source.

The harm that air pollutants give to the human body include asthma and

breathing, chronic lung diseases, greater risk of respiratory infections, worsening of

existing heart and lung conditions, increased incidence of various forms of cancer, and

fetal defects among babies.

Because health is determined by many factors, of which air breathed is just one,

and because of pollutant often acts in combination with others, it is difficult to say with

certainly that a particular pollutant or even by pollution generally. It is possible,

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