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Carbon Emissions

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Carbon Emissions
Polina Kirilyuk
Drivers Education Class
June 14, 2013
Human race, over a long period of time, has evolved to what we are today, Homo-sapiens, those who can think and reason. We’ve progressed so far, to satisfy our guilty pleasure - comfort. Everything we have invented, from clothing to heavy machinery, was made to make our lives just a tad easier. Our every –day solace comes with a price: our internal and external environments are at risk of being annihilated. We use up our mother-nature’s gifts for our own convenience and destroy what has been living on this planet for billions of years. By creating comfort for the best of humanity, we are making earth a more and more polluted place; we create problems that may concern our own existence.
Passenger car – a multipurpose vehicle that many people own. This invention is great. It has revolutionized transportation; people can get places faster, freely and privately. Almost every family in United States has at least one. Statistics say, that 89% of Americans have a passenger vehicle in a household, and that’s an amazing thing, but, this privilege leads to more serious problems than not getting somewhere on time. Car emissions produce three types of carbon - Carbon Monoxide (CO) and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and hydrocarbon (CH4) - which are traumatizing both our health and the environment.
By itself, carbon isn’t a harmful element, but one of its characteristics is easily pairing up with majority the elements in the periodic table. Its ability to bond is infinite; it can create many different substances without any problems.
Carbon Monoxide is a poisonous gas, that leads to severe poisonings and in many cases are fatal. Almost sixty present of all carbon monoxide is produced by cars. As we breathe it in, it slowly attaches itself to hemoglobin in our body and restricts air from going in. Carbon Monoxide is nicknamed the “Silent Killer” because of its transparent nature: we can’t see, hear or smell it. This



Citations: http://www.wri.org/publication/content/8468 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_emissions_control http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003469.htm http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm http://www.southwestclimatechange.org/solutions/reducing-emissions/mmtco2-e

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