Acid Rain

More than half of China's energy comes from burning coal in coal plants. This causes a lot of nitrogen and sulfur to enter the air. All of these pollutants have recently caused a big acid rain problem in China. This acid rain has severely hurt some of China's forest. Not only was the forest being destroyed, many rivers and streams were beginning to show low pH levels, which if the drop in pH continues it could eventually harm everything in the rivers ecosystem. China knows that this is happening but with the need for energy they see no way for them to stop it. They need to burn coal since more than half of their energy comes from coal. It seems as if China is stuck in-between a rock and a hard place.

The New York article talks about rivers in the Adirondack Mountains that were showing signs of the effects from acid rain. This article was much harder to read than the China one. Many technical terms and abbreviations were used making it hard to comprehend all together. Basically it was the same as the article about China. Streams were tested showing low pH levels. They believe this is happening due to the effects of burning coal. The pollutants emitted by the coal eventually led to acid rain.

Questions

1.) The main contributors to acid rain are sulfur and nitrogen that are a result of burning fossil fuels. The nitrogen and sulfur are sent into the atmosphere being absorbed by the moisture. This eventually falls back down to Earth as acid rain.

2.) The lowest pH listed was 4.4.

3.) The major impacts of acid rain all deal with the environment it falls on. The trees, plants and animals can all be harmed or even killed by the acid rain.

4.) The main focus of acid rain research is to see how the plants are damaged by the rain.

5.) Regulations and strict monitoring of coal plants has been used to help improve the problem. But being realistic unless we find a way to make our fossil fuels burn cleaner a real solution will never occur.

Many people in the Adirondack live off well water, does the acid rain have any effects on the water used by the humans?

Since testing has been happening since 1982 is it possible for the animals and the ecosystem as a whole to gain a tolerance for the lower pH levels?

Since so much concern is being had with acid rain why are we not doing more to prevent it?

Vocabulary

Base- Cation- Positively charged ion.