Acid Rain

Environmental issues are big part of our world. As humans, we sometimes forget that the environment is not here to be exploited by us. As mentioned by Aldo Leopold in his “The Land Ethic” essay (1966), we have an obligation towards the environment and we should consider our interactions with it very carefully. With that being said, the health of our environment is deteriorating rapidly and without immediate action, it will not be recognizable anymore. One major environmental issue we need to consider that has been on the rise for the last century is acid rain.

Acid rain is a form of precipitation that is acidic. It has both anthropogenic and natural causes, but anthropogenic causes are the most significant (Mehta, 2013). The burning of fossil fuels is the most popular anthropogenic source. When burned, fossil fuels emit oxides such as sulfur, nitrogen and carbon into the air (Yadav, 2013). In combination with the moisture in the air they form strong acids such as sulfuric acid and nitric acid, and a weak acid known as carbonic acid (Mehta, 2010). These acids fall to earth as precipitation and cause severe environmental damage (Yadav, 2013). The greatest contributor to acid rain is the deposition of sulfur, and the deposition of nitrogen is the second greatest contributor. Precipitation is considered acidic if it falls below 5.5 on a pH scale, where distilled water is neutral with a pH of 7.0 (Yadav, 2013). Acid rain is an environmental issue because it kills animal life, disrupts the soil, causes corrosion and contaminates drinking water (Rhodes and Middleton, 1983)

The main sources of acid rain are sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides (Mehta, 2010). Sulfur dioxide is a by-product of combusted fossil fuels containing sulfur and nitrogen is the result of the use of cars for transportation and from utility plants (Mehta, 2010). These oxides are converted into sulfuric acid and nitric acid via a series of chemical reactions (Rhodes and Middleton, 1983). Sulfur...