Acid Rain.

Authors Avatar

                                                Acid Rain

Acid rain is a great problem in our world. It causes fish

and plants to die in our waters. As well it causes harm to our own race as

well, because we eat these fish, drink this water and eat these plants. It

is a problem that we must all face together and try to get rid of. However

acid rain on it's own is not the biggest problem. It cause many other

problems such as aluminum poisoning. Acid Rain is deadly.

WHAT IS ACID RAIN?

Acid rain is all the rain, snow, mist etc that falls from the sky

onto our planet that contains an unnatural acidic. It is not to be

confused with uncontaminated rain that falls, for that rain is naturally

slightly acidic. It is caused by today's industry. When products are

manufactured many chemicals are used to create it. However because of the

difficulty and cost of properly disposing of these products they are often

emitted into the atmosphere with little or no treatment.

The term was first considered to be important about 20 years ago when

scientists in Sweden and Norway first believed that acidic rain may be

causing great ecological damage to the planet. The problem was that by the

time that the scientist found the problem it was already very large.

Detecting an acid lake is often quite difficult. A lake does not become

acid over night. It happens over a period of many years, some times

decades. The changes are usually to gradual for them to be noticed early.

At the beginning of the 20th century most rivers/lakes like the river

Tovdal in Norway had not yet begun to die. However by 1926 local

inspectors were noticing that many of the lakes were beginning to show

signs of death. Fish were found dead along the banks of many rivers. As

the winters ice began to melt off more and more hundreds upon hundreds

more dead fish (trout in particular) were being found. It was at this time

that scientist began to search for the reason. As the scientists continued

to work they found many piles of dead fish, up to 5000 in one pile,

Join now!

further up the river. Divers were sent in to examine the bottom of the

rivers. What they found were many more dead fish. Many live and dead

specimens were taken back to labs across Norway. When the live specimens

were examined they were found to have very little sodium in their blood.

This is typical a typical symptom of acid poisoning. The acid had entered

the gills of the fish and poisoned them so that they were unable to

extract salt from the water to maintain their bodies sodium levels.

Many scientist said that this acid poising was due ...

This is a preview of the whole essay