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Acid Rain
Acid rain forms when sulfur and nitrogen dioxides combine with moisture in the atmosphere to produce rain, snow, or another kind of precipitation. This kind of pollution may also be suspended in fog or deposited in a dry form. Acid rain is most common in North America and Europe. Acid rain has also been detected in other areas of the world such as tropical rain forests of Africa. Canada has placed limitations on the sulfur emissions. The United States has not, so the emissions may still drift into Canada. The acid rain cycle begins with hundreds of power plants burning millions of tons of coal. Burning coal produces electricity for us. Coal is made of carbon, but the coal that we mine is not pure carbon. It is mixed with other minerals. Two of these are sulfur and nitrogen. Then the coal is burned some of the sulfur changes into sulfur dioxide and nitrogen changes into nitrogen oxide. These escape in to the air as poisonous gases. Some smokestacks release chemicals like mercury, arsenic, and aluminum. Some of these minerals are changed in to gases and others become tiny specks of ash. As these chemicals drift, they may change again. They may react with other chemicals in the air. When sulfur dioxide combines with water, the result is sulfuric acid. When nitrogen oxide gas combines with water, the result is also another acid. When the clouds releases rain or other precipitation, the acid goes with it. This is called acid rain. The level of acid is measured in pH levels. The pH scale begins at 0 and ends with 14. A reading lower than 7 is called acidic, and a reading higher than 7 is called basic. Seven is neutral. Normal rain is slightly acidic with a pH level of about 6.5. Rain with a pH of 5.5 is then times more acidic than normal rain and rain with pH of 4.5 is a hundred times more acidic than normal rain. In parts of the country, rain with pH levels of 4.5 ... Please login to view comments from other users.
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