How does air pollution affect our environment?

Air pollution presents big environmental threat in many parts of the world. Air pollution includes variety of different harmful chemicals and gases released from our vehicles and our industrial facilities that make our air dirty. Vehicles are the biggest source of air pollution, and in some Asian states like India and China life in some cities is almost unbearable because of tremendous air pollution resulting from cars.

Air pollution has extremely negative effect on our environment, and the most obvious negative effect is the negative effect it has on our health. According to World Health Organization 2.4 million people die each year from causes directly attributable to air pollution, mostly from different respiratory diseases, but it can also lead to heart problems (heart strokes).

Air pollution also has negative impact on climate change, harmful emissions are not only polluting air we breathe but are also giving greenhouse effect much more impact, therefore increasing average temperature on our planet. More vehicles and more industries that are the main source of air pollution on this planet also means more impact to global warming problem.

Globally, vehicles are the main source of air pollution.

Negative environmental effect on climate change is not everything air pollution is capable to do, it also has negative impact on ozone layer, especially some damaging chemicals that shrink our ozone layer, making it thinner, therefore opening the door for harmful ultraviolet rays, and increased risk of developing skin cancer.

Acid rains are yet another negative example that air pollution has on our environment. Acid rains destroy habitats of many animals, pollute water by affecting their acidity, and in general do great damage to many ecosystems.

Now that we know these negative effects of air pollution the question is what can we do to reduce it, and make our planet healthier place to be, and our air clean to breathe. First of all we should start using much less our cars than we used them now, or if we are really dependable upon them we should buy hybrid cars that release significantly less polluting particles compared to traditional cars. Second we should make our industries more green, and green in this case means using renewable energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal energy instead of highly polluting fossil fuels like coal and oil.

If we continue this current trend the number of harmful emissions from vehicles and industry will only increase in years to come, and air pollution problem will continue to grow. We can only hope that world will soon see that current environmental state of air planet is more than worrying and that we must do something to prevent seeing the worse of it. Fighting air pollution is definitely one of the best ways to help our environment.