Word: nitrogen
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THERE are at least five major kinds of air pollution. so identified by the regulatory agencies in the state of California and the federal government. These include oxides of nitrogen, sulfur compounds, particulate, hydro-carbons, and carbon monoxide...
...biosphere (see chart, page 59) is an extraordinarily thin global envelope that sustains the only known life in the universe. At least 400 million years ago, some primeval accident allowed plant life to enrich the atmosphere to a life-supporting mixture of 20% oxygen, plus nitrogen, argon, carbon dioxide and water vapor. With uncanny precision, the mixture was then maintained by plants, animals and bacteria, which used and returned the gases at equal rates. The result is a closed system, a balanced cycle in which nothing is wasted and everything counts...
FERTILIZERS. To boost crop production, nitrogen fertilizers are spread liberally on California's superb farm lands. Just as people get hooked on drugs, so the soil seems to become addicted to chemical additives and loses its ability to fix its own nitrogen. As a result, more and more fertilizer has to be used. What makes the problem doubly serious is that the nitrates eventually turn up in the water supply, where they endanger human health...
...million cars cause 60% of the air pollution in cities. Fully aware of the pressure to reform, Detroit will introduce 1971 models that exhale only 37% as much carbon monoxide as did 1960 models. To achieve this, however, requires increased engine heat, which in turn will increase the nitrogen oxide emissions. And nitrogen oxides are particularly dangerous: under sunlight, they react with waste hydrocarbons from gasoline to form PAN (per-oxyacl nitrate), along with ozone the most toxic element in smog...
...have 50% more nitrogen oxides in the air in California," says Ecologist Kenneth E.M.F. Watt. "This has a direct bearing on the quality of light hitting the surface of the earth. At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable." Tougher auto-emission standards in California will start reducing the nitrogen problem next year. But Watt argues that California's air pollution is already so bad that it may start a wave of mass deaths by 1975?perhaps...