Protecting air from pollution these days has become one of the priorities of society. Indeed, if a person can live without water for several days, without food - for several weeks, then you can’t do without air for several minutes. After all, breathing is a continuous process.
We live at the bottom of the fifth, airy, ocean of the planet, as the atmosphere is often called. If it weren’t, life on Earth could not have been born.
Air composition
The composition of atmospheric air has been constant since the advent of mankind. We know that 78% of the air is nitrogen, 21% is oxygen. The air content of argon and carbon dioxide together is about 1%. And all the other gases in total give us a seemingly insignificant figure of 0.0004%.
What about the other gases? There are many of them: methane, hydrogen, carbon monoxide, sulfur oxides, helium, hydrogen sulfide and others. As long as their number in the air does not change, everything is fine. But with an increase in the concentration of any of them, air pollution occurs. And these gases literally poison our lives.
If people want to maintain their health, protecting the air from pollution is vital.
The effects of changes in air
Air pollution is also dangerous because people have a variety of allergic reactions. According to doctors, allergies are most often caused by the fact that the human immune system cannot recognize synthetic chemicals created not by nature, but by humans. Therefore, air purity protection plays an important role in the prevention of allergic diseases in humans.
Every year a huge amount of new chemicals appears. They change the composition of the atmosphere in large cities, where as a result the number of people suffering from respiratory diseases is growing. No one is surprised that a poisonous cloud of smog almost always hangs over industrial centers.
But even ice-covered and completely non-populated Antarctica did not remain aloof from the pollution process. And not surprising, because the atmosphere is the most mobile of all the shells of the Earth. And the movement of air can not stop the borders between states, nor mountain systems, nor oceans.
Sources of pollution
Thermal power plants, metallurgical and chemical plants are the main air pollutants. Smoke from the chimneys of such enterprises is carried by wind over great distances, leading to the spread of harmful substances tens of kilometers from the source.
Large cities are characterized by traffic jams, in which thousands of cars with running engines stand idle. Exhaust gases contain carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, products of incomplete combustion of fuel and suspended particles. Each of them is in its own way dangerous to health.
Carbon monoxide interferes with the supply of oxygen to the body, causing an exacerbation of heart and vascular diseases. Particles penetrate into the lungs and settle in them, causing asthma, allergic diseases. Hydrocarbons and nitric oxide are a source of destruction of the ozone layer and cause photochemical smog in cities.
Smog great and terrible
The first serious signal that air pollution was necessary was the Great Smog of 1952 in London. As a result of stagnation of fog and
sulfur dioxide over the city
, which is formed during the combustion of coal in fireplaces, thermal power plants and boiler houses, the UK capital was choked for three days from a lack of oxygen.
About 4 thousand people became victims of smog, and another 100 thousand received exacerbations of diseases of the respiratory and cardiovascular systems. And for the first time, people started talking massively that air protection in the city was required.
The result was the adoption in 1956 of the law "On Clean Air", which banned the combustion of coal. Since then, in most countries, air pollution protection has been enshrined in law.
Russian law on air protection
In Russia, the main regulatory act in this area is the Federal Law "On the Protection of Atmospheric Air".
He established air quality standards (hygienic and sanitary) and standards for harmful emissions. The law requires state registration of polluting and hazardous substances and the need for special permits for their release. The production and use of fuel is possible only with certification of fuel for atmospheric safety.
If the degree of danger to humans and nature is not established, the release of such substances into the atmosphere is prohibited. It is forbidden to operate business facilities that do not have a facility for cleaning exhaust gases and control systems. Vehicles with excess concentrations of hazardous substances in emissions are prohibited from using.
The Law on Air Protection also establishes the responsibilities of citizens and enterprises. For the emission of harmful substances into the atmosphere in volumes exceeding existing standards, they bear legal and material liability. Moreover, the payment of fines does not exempt from the obligation to install gaseous waste treatment systems.
The most "dirty" cities of Russia
Air protection measures are especially important for those settlements that top the list of Russian cities with the most severe environmental conditions, including air pollution. It Azov, Achinsk, Barnaul, Beloyarsk, Blagoveshchensk, Bratsk, Volgograd, Volzhsky, Dzerzhinsk, Ekaterinburg, Winter, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Kurgan, Kyzyl, Lesosibirsk, Magnitogorsk, Minusinsk, Moscow, Naberezhnye Chelny, Neryungri, Nizhnekamsk, Nizhniy Tagil, Novokuznetsk , Novocherkassk, Norilsk, Rostov-on-Don, Selenginsk, Solikamsk, Stavropol, Sterlitamak, Tver, Ussuriysk, Chernogorsk, Chita, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
Protecting cities from air pollution
Air protection in the city should begin with the elimination of traffic jams, especially during rush hours. Therefore, transport interchanges are being built to avoid standing at traffic lights, one-way traffic on parallel streets, etc. is introduced. Bypass routes are built to limit the number of vehicles. In many large cities of the world, there are days when it is only permitted to travel by public transport in the central regions, and it is better to leave your personal car in the garage.
In European countries, such as Holland, Denmark, Lithuania, locals consider the best mode of urban transport a bicycle. It is economical, does not require fuel, does not pollute the air. Yes, and traffic jams are not afraid of him. And the benefits of cycling provides an added plus.
But air quality in cities depends not only on transport. Industrial enterprises are equipped with air purification systems, pollution levels are constantly monitored. They try to make factory chimneys higher so that the smoke does not disperse in the city itself, but is carried away from it. This does not solve the problem as a whole, but reduces the concentration of hazardous substances in the atmosphere. For the same purpose, the construction of new "dirty" enterprises in large cities is prohibited.
This can be considered half measures. And the real measure is the introduction of non-waste technologies in which there is simply no place for waste to occur.
Fire fighting
Many remember the summer of 2010, when many cities in Central Russia were captured by smog from burning peat bogs. Residents of some settlements had to be evacuated not only due to the danger of fires, but also because of the heavy smoke of the territory. Therefore, air protection measures should include the prevention and control of forest and peat fires as natural atmospheric pollutants.
The international cooperation
Protecting air from pollution is not only a matter of Russia or another separate country. After all, as already mentioned, air movement does not recognize state borders. Therefore, international cooperation is vital.
The main coordinator of various countries' environmental policies is
the United Nations. The UN General Assembly defines the main directions of environmental policy, the principles of relations between countries on the protection of nature. She holds international conferences on the most acute environmental problems, develops recommendations for the protection of nature, including measures for the protection of the air. This helps to develop cooperation of many countries of the world to
protect the environment.It was the UN that initiated the signed multilateral treaties on the protection of atmospheric air, the protection of the ozone layer and many other documents on the environmental well-being of the countries of the world. Indeed, now everyone understands - we have one Earth for everyone, and the atmosphere is also one.