Word: acidizing
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When Ronald Reagan visited Ottawa last year, the welcome was anything but neighborly. Several hundred Canadians waved placards, symbolically hoisted weathered umbrellas and shouted, "Acid rain, go home!" The President good-naturedly brushed off the demonstration, telling Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, "It made me feel right at home." The shouting has momentarily died down, but simmering anger over acid rain continues to pollute relations between the U.S. and Canada...
...uniquely modern, postindustrial blight, acid rain is as widespread as the winds that disperse it. In the northeast U.S. and in Canada and northern Europe, it is reducing lakes, rivers and ponds to eerily crystalline, lifeless bodies of water, killing off everything from indigenous fish stocks to microscopic vegetation. It is suspected of spiriting away mineral nutrients from the soil on which forests thrive. Its corrosive assault on buildings and water systems costs millions of dollars annually. It may also pose a substantial threat to human health, principally by contaminating public drinking water. Says Canada's Minister...
Taking note of the strain acid rain has caused in U.S.-Canada relations, Reagan acknowledged his concern to Trudeau. But since then the Administration has only reluctantly confronted the issue, contending that further studies are necessary. At an acid-rain symposium in Pittsburgh in October, Environmental Protection Administrator Anne Gorsuch said, "Our experience of recent years should teach us not to rush in with quick fixes where we know we have an inadequate understanding of existing conditions." Meanwhile the Canadian government has been trying to persuade the Administration to change its position on legislation that would enforce...
Such natural processes as volcanic eruptions, forest fires and the bacterial decomposition of organic matter produce some of the damaging acidic sulfur and nitrogen compounds. But most experts believe that the current problem is directly traceable to the burning of fossil fuels by power plants, factories and smelting operations and, to a lesser extent, auto emissions. When tall smokestacks vent their fumes, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and traces of such toxic metals as mercury and cadmium mix with water vapor in the atmosphere. Chemical reactions follow that form dilute solutions of nitric and sulfuric acids-acid rain...
...acidic "depositions," as scientists call them, can come down in almost any form, including hail, snow, fog or even dry particles. On the standard chemical scale for measuring acidity or alkalinity, they are defined as having a pH level under 5.6 (a neutral solution has pH 7). Despite the use of tracking balloons and other sophisticated techniques, it is difficult to link acidity with a specific smokestack. But there is little doubt about the damaging effects of acid rain. Absorbed into the soil, it breaks down minerals containing calcium, potassium and aluminum, robbing plants of nutrients. Eventually the acid enters...