-
Asked by anon-177057 to Andrew, Urslaan, Nicola, Helen, Daniel, Becky on 9 Jun 2018.
-
Andrew Singer answered on 9 Jun 2018:
Air pollution takes on many many forms: combustion from car/lorry engines, ammonia pollution from fertiliser application to soils or from pig/cow/chicken farming. Methane comes from cow farts, landfills and land that had been previously frozen (in the tundra). These are examples of air pollution. Each one has many solutions and might be somewhat unrelated to one another. A shortcut to reducing air pollution is 1) become a vegetarian (or eat less meat); 2) take public transportation and support the conversion to zero-emission cars/transportation. Ultimately a new and clean source of energy would make air pollution drop massively!
-
-
Daniel Marsh answered on 11 Jun 2018:
Air pollution comes from lots of different activites, some are manmade and others are from natural sources and it is made up of a complex mixture of gases and particles that differ depending on the source.
In large cities such as London half the nitrogen dioxide and particle pollution comes from on-road vehicles but only about 30% of this is actually from tailpipe emissions. The rest comes from brake and tire wear as well as breakdown of the vehicle body so moving towards an all electric on-road fleet will not solve our urban air pollution issues overnight. Other manmade sources in cities and towns includes wood burning, gas boilers, inshore shipping, trains, construction and demolition, aviation as well as more location specific localised emissions from industry.
A lot of work has already been done to reduce on-road emissions with changes to lorries, buses and taxis, improved public transport and introduction of ‘low emission zones’ to prevent the most polluting vehicles entering urban areas but there is still a long way to go with the other sectors. Air quality scientists are finding ways to reduce pollution but there is no simple answer and often those that are proposed have negative impacts for climate change so its a careful balancing act!
-
Urslaan Chohan answered on 12 Jun 2018:
The best solutions involve using renewable sources of energy. So hydropower, wind power for example are good ways to reduce the usage of fossil fuels.
Comments