Air pollution
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Air pollution is the introduction into the atmosphere of chemicals, particulates, or biological materials that cause discomfort, disease, or death to humans, damage other living organisms such as food crops, or damage the natural environment or built environment.
Historical disasters
The world's worst short-term civilian pollution crisis was the 1984 Bhopal Disaster in India. Leaked industrial vapours from the Union Carbide factory, belonging to Union Carbide, Inc., U.S.A. (later bought by Dow Chemical Company), killed at least 3787 people and injured from 150,000 to 600,000. The United Kingdom suffered its worst air pollution event when the December 4 Great Smog of 1952 formed over London. In six days more than 4,000 died and more recent estimates put the figure at nearer 12,000. An accidental leak of anthrax spores from a biological warfare laboratory in the former USSR in 1979 near Sverdlovsk is believed to have caused at least 64 deaths. The worst single incident of air pollution to occur in the US occurred in Donora, Pennsylvania in late October, 1948, when 20 people died and over 7,000 were injured.
See also
- Air pollutant concentrations
- Air stagnation
- ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution
- Asian brown cloud
- Atmospheric chemistry
- Beehive burner
- Best Available Control Technology
- Building biology
- Critical load
- Emission standard
- Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database
- Environmental agreement
- Flue-gas emissions from fossil-fuel combustion
- Global Atmosphere Watch
- Global dimming
- Haze
- Health Effects Institute (HEI)
- Indicator value
- Industrial Hygiene Foundation
- International Agency for Research on Cancer
- Kyoto Protocol
- Light water reactor sustainability
- List of smogs by death toll
- Lowest Achievable Emissions Rate
- NASA Clean Air Study
- Particulate matter sampler
- Polluter pays principle
- Regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act
- Tire fire
