Air Quality and Atmospheric Chemistry

The atmosphere is full of floating microscopic particles ranging from grains of sand to pollen and bacteria. No parcel of air is ever perfectly clean, even those that have been sent through an air filter of some type. These particles infiltrate every bit of air we breath, giving rise to health-related issues regarding our atmosphere. Called biometeorology, this seemingly new science has been around for quite some time as an imperfect idea of conceptualism, though it is now often coupled with atmospheric chemistry, as the two are highly interrelated. Everything from allergies to climate change can be related to air particles and chemistry, and we are only now beginning to delve in on the subject.

Though not as often as on solid surfaces, bacteria and viruses can make their way through the air like trucks and cars on a highway. Some, like the Ebola virus, are so virulent that people burying the poor souls lost to the disease must wear protective masks because the coffin, as sealed up as it may be, is not enough to stop the germ. Colds and influenza are spread in schools like this as well, as children often come close to each other when speaking, leading to school-wide epidemics that can cut the student populous up to two thirds in a highly affected school. Short of making sure they wash their hands, the only thing concerned parents can do is make the kids wear protective masks, which would have to removed upon entrance to the school due to most educational policies regarding distractive clothing.

Air temperature may be a major factor in the spread of certain diseases. Throughout history, many documented cases have been found in which a violent germ, such as the Black Plague, flooded the population in early Autumn, but was hence slowed during the extreme winter months. During spikes of warm temperatures, the bacteria would swarm about the populous again, only to die down some during the next cold spell. This could be the result of direct temperature aversion in the germs, but may also be linked to the fact that, even in our modern times of central heating and insulated vehicles, people move about to different groups of acknowledged kinship in only small amounts during cold weather. That is, one person is less likely to travel to meet other people in the extreme cold. This could also explain the fact that most deadly germs originate in tropical areas. The abundance of heat makes germs thrive. Due to the semi-poor conditions that exist in most of the tropical countries, these diseases are allowed to spread uncontrolled into the temperate regions. Cholera is a prime example, as it came from India due to poor sanitation measures and water quality, and spread like wildfire around the world because of the abundance of heat.

Pollution is another health concern in major cities. The industrial processes of businesses and factories, as well as the fires in homes and automobile emissions release hazardous particles and gasses into the air. Due to the vastness of some sprawling cities and metropolises, air within their confines tends to hold over the regions, resulting in a backup of air and a dome of smog and smoke. With no clean air recycling through the area, the dome builds for days and days before dissipating, perhaps even enveloping the city itself, as in the deadly smogs experienced by London in the fifties. Such backups can lead to asthma related illnesses, as well as cancerous and other deadly ailments. When left unchecked, the entire population's health can come into question. What's more, smog clouds create distasteful eyesores over otherwise amazing cities.

Many urban citizens, as well as those that fall to allergies, obtain air cleansers in hopes of purifying their air with certain rooms or buildings. Though these can help with specific problems, randomly putting one in your home just to clean air you think is dirty can be a waste of time. Certain filters work on certain types of particles, whether they be pollution emissions, ash particles from nearby fires, or pollen and seed particles from a forest or garden outside the window. All work in special ways designed to take out only certain small bits, leaving the rest to trouble you later. The best thing to do is to find out exactly what is causing the dilemma and then act on those results, buying only what you know you need, thereby not wasting money. You could also, if air purifiers don't work, make a drastic change and move to a different setting or get rid of the source of your particle problems.

Particles in the atmosphere also exert power in creating weather systems. Water molecules must attach themselves to a base particle, called nucleation, and conglomerate into bigger drops that form rain, clouds, snow, and hail. These water formations in the atmosphere affect lightning formation by separating charged ion particles and also dictate the evolution of the storm, as massive clouds like cumulonimbus are at the mercy of the water drops that create them, and thereby, the particles. With such a large sway, such small things really can directly and majorly influence the lives of the population perched directly below a spinning tornado-spawning supercell. This is a small reason why the Midwest and major industrial areas experience so much convection, which produces storms. Large cities have been the reason why small towns and farms one hundred miles down wind of them have been exposed to such harsh weather conditions; the industrial particles induce nucleation, producing convective storms.

As massive as weather conditions may be, particles exert influence on climatic forces as well. Volcanoes are horrible disasters in themselves, taking lives with lava flows, ash clouds, lahars and tsunamis. Yet their grip can hold over months and years, depending on the size of their eruptions, or more importantly to the world, their ash plumes. When a volcano erupts, superheated gasses and rocks blow high up into the troposphere, creating a sort of mushroom cloud experienced in atomic bomb explosions. If the heat of the eruption and the amount of particles is vast enough, the ash and sulfuric acid bits can pop over the tropopause into the stratosphere. This puts them above the realm of rain and weather systems, which would surely recycle the bits in nucleation and bring them back to Earth. These bits do a marvelous job of blocking and reflecting incoming solar insulation, or light and heat. This reduces the temperatures in the world below and can result in colder conditions, perhaps even an ice age.

Volcanoes erupting in enough areas, or the eruption of a supervolcano like the one under Yellowstone National Park, can put enough ash into the stratosphere to cause lower temperatures, even ice age-like conditions that destroy crop yields, put the entire worlds populous into fits of hunger and disease, and push society to the fringe of survival as snow and ice inundates the Earth. A meteor or asteroid impact may cause the same thing from the momentum of their implosion throwing dust and dirt into the higher air. Either way, the future of mankind would be severely tested in the wake of particles lass than the size of an eye of a needle. You can feel the effects of such particle during a forest fire, when the smoke and soot particles clog the sky and lower the usually hot summer temperatures by as much as twenty degrees!

Atmospheric particles and gasses influence our lives in both mundane and extraordinary ways. Though they may be terrible to those with asthma and lung problems, we must remember that no air we breath is ever completely pure of particles, even deep in a forest or out at sea. Some may actually be beneficial, allowing us to sense troublesome sources of dust or pollutants nearby. Also, our lungs do a wonderful job of filtering out any unwanted intruders anyways. Our job is merely to try and breath air that will not inundate our inner system of purification and immunization. The best ways to do this are to try and live in clearer areas free of pollution, to work in environmentally safe areas, and to exercise great care in what we put into our atmosphere. Look to your city officials and talk to them about ridding your pristine urban landscape of the foul air surrounding it every day. Do something about the particles you breath, and remember, though we may not ever control climate change or weather phenomenon, we can still affect them by how much we put back out into the air. It is up to us.