According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the average person breathes in 3,400 gallons of air each day. Because air is so essential to life, it is important that it be free of pollutants. Throughout the world poor air quality contributes to hundreds of thousands of deaths and diseases each year, not to mention dying forests and lakes and the corrosion of stone buildings and monuments…
Air quality standards established under the Clean Air Act of 1970 (CAA; PL 91-604) are designed to protect public health and welfare. The act was amended by the CAA Amendments of 1990 (CAAA; PL 101-549) with the goal of cleaning up urban air. It established air quality standards called the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for six major air pollutants: These are called the priority or…
Automobiles dominate the transportation sector's share of energy-related carbon emissions. The transportation sector accounts for more than 65 percent of U.S. petroleum consumption and more than 75 percent of carbon monoxide (CO) emissions. As shown in Figure 5.19, the United States leads the world in car ownership. In 2001 there were nearly 850 vehicles per 1000 people in the United State…
As air travel in affluent nations has increased, it has caused a number of environmental problems. The average American flew 1,739 miles a year by 2000. Europeans, though they flew fewer miles, had the world's most crowded skies, while the most rapid growth in flying was in Asia. Most air travel is done by a small portion of the world's population. Flying carries an environmental pri…
The most widespread technological inventions to reduce emissions have been electrostatic precipitators (electrical cleaning systems) and filters designed to control emissions from power plants. These reduce particulate emissions from smokestacks by 99.5 percent but do nothing about gaseous emissions. The primary way to reduce sulfur dioxide (SO2) has been the use of scrubbers (an air pollution dev…
Air quality plays a major but complex role in public health. Among the factors that must be considered are the levels of pollutants in the air, the levels of individual exposure to these pollutants, individual susceptibility to toxic substances, and exposure time related to ill effects from certain substances. Blaming health effects on specific pollutants is also complicated by the health impact o…
In 1970 the U.S. Congress passed the landmark CAA, proclaiming that it would restore urban air quality. It was no coincidence that the law was passed during a 14-day Washington, D.C., smog alert. Although the CAA has had mixed results, and many goals remain to be met, most experts credit it with making great strides toward cleaning up the air. The overall goal of the CAAA is to reduce the pollutan…
The dissatisfaction with government regulation that developed in the 1980s grew even stronger in the 1990s. The Republican-led Congress took steps to put the brakes on what it considered growing environmental regulation. As a result, the funding was cut for environmental protection—including the CAA, the CAAA, the Clean Water Act (PL 92-500), the Safe Drinking Water Act (PL 93-523), and oth…
Regulated for decades as "natural monopolies," by the year 2000 electric utilities faced a radical shift toward increased competition. As in the airline, trucking, natural gas, and telecommunications industries, more efficient technology and increasing demand for lower rates led regulators to consider some form of utility company deregulation. Thus, the Federal Energy Policy Act of 1…
Environmental pollution is worldwide, and environmental problems of the future are expected to become increasingly regional and global. Evidence mounts that the results of human activities—especially the gases produced by the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas—may be causing atmospheric warming worldwide. Developing countries stand on the brink of economic growth that they hope…
The burning of forests worldwide, either intentionally or accidentally, has consequences for nations many miles away. In 1997 fires in Indonesian forests purposefully started by humans practicing slash-and-burn agriculture (a method of cutting down and burning vegetation to clear the land) darkened the skies and blotted out the sun in seven Southeast Asian nations for many months. The haze caused …
Every year the Gallup Organization conducts a poll on the environment around the time of the nation's celebration of Earth Day. In the March 2004 poll, participants were asked about their level of concern related to particular environmental problems. Table 5.9 shows that 39 percent of those asked expressed a great deal of concern about air pollution, compared to 30 percent who expressed a f…
This song is preserved in two New Kingdom documents. It is known from a tomb from early in the reign of Amenhotep IV, later called Akhenaten (1352?1336 B.C.E. ). It is also known from a Ramesside (1292?1075 B.C.E. ) papyrus called Papyrus Harris 500 , now in the British Museum. The text, however, states that it was written in the reign of King Intef who would have lived in the Middle Kingdom, perh…
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