Clean Air Act essays

Clean Air Act essays Pollution in the United States is getting worse and worse by the day. Poor air quality is a serious issue and health risk in cities throughout the country. The main source of the pollution problem is our transportation. Cars produce roughly one half of the pollution in our cities, and about a quarter of the greenhouse gases. The internal combustion engine is the single largest source of air pollution in the United States. Toxic gases are emitted into the atmosphere as byproducts of the combustion process and also from evaporating gasoline. The main pollutants consist of carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, hydrocarbons, and particulates, each of which are harmful to the human body and contribute to global warming. Carbon monoxide is the largest pollutant emitted. It attaches to the hemoglobin in the blood and lowers the bloods oxygen-carrying capacity, which causes headaches, drowsiness and blurred vision, and is fatal with prolonged exposure. Hydrocarbons cause eye irritation, coughing, wheezing, shortage of breath and serious lung damage. Nitrogen oxide causes acid rain and taints the quality of our water. Pollution is obviously a very serious problem that is putting each of us risk, as well as damaging our environment. Unfortunately this is not something that can be solved any time soon, however we must make an effort to deal with it. Gasoline is not the only way to power an automobile. There is technology out on the market, along with much more still in development, that provides logical substitutes to our current automobile fuel. Several companies have started mass production of cars that are fueled by both electricity and gasoline, known as hybrids. These hybrids only use gasoline during acceleration and run off an electric battery the remainder of the time. This allows these cars to travel up to 70 miles on one gallon of gas and they are still able to move at speeds ne ...