CHEMISTRY PROJECT

TOPIC:
ENVIRONMENTAL
POLLUTION
 CONTENTS
What is pollution?
Modern Awareness
Forms of pollution
Sources & causes
Effects
Pollution control
Bibliography
Remarks
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude to my chemistry

Teacher Mrs. M. Fathima Begum for her able guidance
and support in completing my project.

I would also like to extend my gratitude to Principal Sir

Mr. C. JEYA SEKARAN for providing me with all the facility that was
required.

Lastly I like to thank all my supporters who have motivated me to fulfill

my project before the timeline.

A.Siva
12th
 Certificate
It is hereby to certify that, the original and genuine
investigation work been carried out to investigate about
the subject matter and the related data collection and
investigation has completed solely, sincerely and satisfy
by A. Siva of class 12th Sri Vetri Vidhyalaya Public
School, regarding his project titled Project on Dyeing of
Fabrics.

Viva voce held on :

Registration no :
Signature of Guide:

Signature of internal
Examiner:
 What is Pollution?
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural
environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or
discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living
organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances
or energy, such as noise, heat, or light.
Pollutants, the elements of pollution, can be foreign substances or
energies, or naturally occurring; when
naturally occurring, they are considered contaminants when they
exceed natural levels. Pollution is often classedas point source or
nonpoint source pollution. The Blacksmith Institute issues an
annual list of the world's worst polluted places. In the 2007 issues
the ten top nominees are located in Azerbaijan, China, India, Peru,
Russia, Ukraine, and Zambia.

Modern awareness
Pollution became a popular issue after World War II, due to
radioactive fallout from atomic warfare and testing. Then anon-
nuclear event, The Great Smog of 1952 in London, killed at least
4000 people. This prompted some of the firstmajor modern
environmental legislation, The Clean Air Act of 1956.
Pollution began to draw major public attention in the United
States between the mid-1950s and early 1970s, when Congress
passed the Noise Control Act, the Clean AirAct, the Clean Water
Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.
Bad bouts of local pollution helped increase consciousness.
PCB (Polychlorinated biphenyl)
Dumping in the Hudson River resulted in a ban by the EPAon
consumption of its fish in 1974. Long-term dioxin contamination
at Love Canal starting in 1947 became a national news story in
1978 and led to the Superfund legislation of 1980. Legal
proceedings in the 1990s helped bring to light Chromium-6
releases in California--the champions of whose victims became
famous.

The pollution of industrial land gave rise to the name Brownfield,

a term now common in city planning. DDT wasbanned in most
of the developed world after the publication of Rachel Carson's
Silent Spring.
The development of nuclear science introduced radioactive
contamination, which can remain lethally radioactive for hundreds
of thousands of years. Lake Karachay, named by the World
watch Institute as the "most polluted spot" on earth, served as a
disposal site for the Soviet Union throughout the 1950s and
1960s. Second place may go to the area of Chelyabinsk U.S.S.R.
as the "Most polluted place on the planet".
Nuclear weapons continued to be tested in the Cold War,
sometimes near inhabited areas, especially in the earlier stages of
their development. The toll on the worst affectedpopulations and
the growth since then in understanding about the critical threat
to human health posed by radioactivity has also been a
prohibitive complication associated with nuclear power.
Though extreme care is practiced in that industry, the potential
for disaster suggested by incidents such as those at Three Mile
Island
and Chernobyl pose a lingering specter of public mistrust.One
legacy of nuclear testing before most forms were banned has
been significantly raised levels of backgroundradiation.

International catastrophes such as the wreck of the AmocoCadiz

oil tanker off the coast of Brittany in 1978 and the Bhopal
disaster in 1984 have demonstrated the universality of such
events and the scale on which efforts to address them needed to
engage. The borderless nature of atmosphere and oceans
inevitably resulted in the implication of pollution on a planetary
level with the issue of global warming. Most recently the term
persistent organic pollutant (POP) has come to describe a group
of chemicals such as PBDEs and PFCs among others. Though
their effects remain somewhat less well understood owing to a
lack of experimental data, they have been detected invarious
ecological habitats far removed from industrial activity such as
the Arctic, demonstrating diffusion and bioaccumulation after
only a relatively brief period of widespread use.
Growing evidence of local and global pollution and an
increasingly informed public over time have given rise to
environmentalism and the environmental movement, which
generally seek to limit human impact on the environment.
 Forms of Pollution
The major forms of pollution are listed below along with the
particular pollutants relevant to each of them:
Air pollution, the release of chemicals and particulates into
the atmosphere. Common gaseouspollutants include carbon
monoxide, sulfur dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and
nitrogen oxides produced by industry and motor vehicles.
Photochemical ozone and smog are created as nitrogen
oxides and hydrocarbons react to sunlight. Particulate matter,
or fine dust is characterized by theirmicrometer size PM10 to
PM2.5.
Light pollution, includes light trespass, over-illuminationand
astronomical interference.
Littering
Noise pollution, which encompasses roadway noise,
aircraft noise, industrial noise as well as high-intensity sonar.
Soil contamination occurs when chemicals are released
intentionally, by spill or underground leakage.Among the
most significant soil contaminants are hydrocarbons, heavy
metals, MTBE, herbicides, pesticides and chlorinated
hydrocarbons.
Radioactive contamination, resulting from 20th century
activities in atomic physics, such as nuclear power generation
and nuclear weapons research, manufacture and deployment.
(See alpha emitters andactinides in the environment.)
 Thermal pollution, is a temperature change in natural
water bodies caused by human influence, suchas use of
water as coolant in a power plant.
Visual pollution, which can refer to the presence of
overhead power lines, motorway billboards, scarred
landforms (as from strip mining), open storage of trashor
municipal solid waste.
Water pollution, by the discharge of wastewater from
commercial and industrial waste (intentionally orthrough
spills) into surface waters; discharges of untreated domestic
sewage, and chemical contaminants, such as chlorine, from
treated sewage; release of waste and contaminants into
surface runoff flowing to surface waters (including urban
runoff and agricultural runoff, which may contain chemical
fertilizers and pesticides); waste disposal and leachinginto
groundwater; eutrophication and littering.

Sources and causes

Air pollution comes from both natural and man-made sources.
Though globally man made pollutants from combustion,
construction, mining, agriculture and warfareare increasingly
significant in the air pollution equation.Motor vehicle emissions
are one of the leading causes ofair pollution. China, United
States, Russia, Mexico, and Japan are the world leaders in air
pollution emissions.
Principal stationary pollution sources include chemical plants ,
coal-fired power plants, oil refineries, petrochemicalplants,
nuclear waste disposal activity, incinerators, large
livestock farms (dairy cows, pigs, poultry, etc.), PVC factories,
metals production factories, plastics factories, and other heavy
industry. Agricultural air pollution comesfrom contemporary
practices, which include clear felling and burning of natural
vegetation as well as spraying of pesticides and herbicides.
About 400 million metric tons of hazardous wastes are
generated each year. The United States alone produces about
250 million metric tons. Americans constitute less than 5% of the
world's population, but produce roughly 25% of the world’s
CO2, and generate approximately 30%of world’s waste. In
2007, China has overtaken the UnitedStates as the world's
biggest producer of CO2.
In February 2007, a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), representing the work of 2,500
scientists, economists, and policymakers from more than 120
countries, said that humans have been the primary cause of
global warming since 1950. Humans have ways tocut greenhouse
gas emissions and avoid the consequencesof global warming, a
major climate report concluded. But inorder to change the climate,
the transition from fossil fuels like coal and oil needs to occur
within decades, according to the final report this year from the
UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Some of the more common soil contaminants are chlorinated
hydrocarbons (CFH), heavy metals (such as chromium,
cadmium–found in rechargeable batteries, and lead–found in lead
paint, aviation fuel and still in some countries, gasoline), MTBE,
zinc, arsenic and benzene. In 2001 a series of press reports
culminating in a book called Fateful Harvest unveiled a
widespread practice of recyclingindustrial byproducts into
fertilizer, resulting in the contamination of the soil with various
metals.
Ordinary municipal landfills are the source of many chemical
substances entering the soil environment (and often groundwater)
, emanating from the wide variety of refuse accepted, especially
substances illegally discardedthere, or from pre-1970 landfills
that may have been subject to little control in the U.S. or EU.
There have alsobeen some unusual releases of polychlorinated
dibenzodioxins, commonly called dioxins for simplicity, such as
TCDD(2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin).
Pollution can also be the consequence of a natural disaster.For
example, hurricanes often involve water contamination from
sewage, and petrochemical spills from ruptured boats or
automobiles. Larger scale and environmental damage is not
uncommon when coastal oil rigs or refineries are involved. Some
sources of pollution, such as nuclear power plants or oil tankers,
can produce widespread and potentially hazardous releases when
accidents occur.
In the case of noise pollution the dominant source class isthe
motor vehicle, producing about ninety percent of all unwanted
noise worldwide.

Effects
Human health:
Adverse air quality can kill many organisms including humans.
Ozone pollution can cause respiratory disease, cardiovascular
disease, throat inflammation, chest pain, and congestion. Water
pollution causes approximately 14,000 deaths per day, mostly
due to contamination of drinking water by untreated sewage in
developing countries. An estimated 700 million Indians have no
accessto a proper toilet, and 1,000 Indian children die of
diarrhoeal sickness every day. Nearly 500 million Chinese lack
access to safe drinking water. 656,000 people die prematurely
each year in China because of air pollution. In India, air pollution
is believed to cause 527,700 fatalities a year. Studies have
estimated that the number of people killed annually in the US
could be over 50,000.
Oil spills can cause skin irritations and rashes. Noise pollution
induces hearing loss, high blood pressure, stress, and sleep
disturbance. Mercury has been linked to developmental deficits in
children and neurological symptoms. Older people are majorly
exposed to diseases induced by air pollution. Those with heart or
lung disordersare under additional risk.

Children and infants are also at serious risk. Lead and other
heavy metals have been shown to cause neurological problems.
Chemical and radioactive substances can cause cancer and as
well as birth defects.

Environment:
Pollution has been found to be present widely in the environment.
There are a number of effects of this: Biomagnification describes
situations where toxins (such asheavy metals) may pass through
tropic levels, becoming exponentially more concentrated in the
process.
Carbon dioxide emissions cause ocean acidification, the
ongoing decrease in the pH of the Earth's oceans as
CO2becomes dissolved.
The emission of greenhouse gases leads to global warming
which affects ecosystems in many ways.
Invasive species can out compete native species and reduce
biodiversity. Invasive plants can contribute debrisand
biomolecules (allelopathy) that can alter soil and chemical
compositions of an environment, often reducingnative species
competitiveness.
Nitrogen oxides are removed from the air by rain and fertilize
land, which can change the species composition ofecosystems.
Smog and haze can reduce the amount of sunlight received by
plants to carry out photosynthesis and leads tothe production of
tropospheric ozone which damages plants.
Soil can become infertile and unsuitable for plants. This
willaffect other organisms in the food web.
Sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide can cause acid rain,which
lowers the pH value of soil.

Environmental healthinformation:
The Toxicology and Environmental Health Information Program
(TEHIP) at the United States National Library of Medicine
(NLM) maintains a comprehensive toxicology and environmental
health web site that includes access to resources produced by
TEHIP and by other government agencies and organizations.
This web site includes links to databases, bibliographies,
tutorials, and other scientific and consumer-oriented resources.
TEHIP also is responsiblefor the Toxicology Data Network
(TOXNET®) an integrated system of toxicology and
environmental health databases that are available free of charge
on the web.
TOXMAP is a Geographic Information System (GIS) that is part
of TOXNET. TOXMAP uses maps of the United States tohelp
users visually explore data from the United States Environmental
Protection Agency's (EPA) Toxics Release Inventory and
Superfund Basic Research Programs.

Pollution control
Pollution control is a term used in environmental management. It
means the control of emissions and effluents into air, water or soil.
Without pollution control, the waste products from consumption,
heating, agriculture,mining, manufacturing, transportation and
other human activities, whether they accumulate or disperse, will
degrade the environment. In the hierarchy of controls, pollution
prevention and waste minimization are more desirable than
pollution control. In the field of land development, low impact
development is a similar technique for the prevention of urban
runoff.
 Pollution control devices:

Dust collection systems

1. Baghouses
2. Cyclones
3. Electrostatic precipitators

Scrubbers
1. Baffle spray scrubber
2. Cyclonic spray scrubber
3. Ejector venturi scrubber
4. Mechanically aided scrubber
 5. Spray tower
6. Wet scrubber

Sewage treatment
1. Sedimentation (Primary treatment)
2. Activated sludge biotreaters (Secondary treatment;also
used for industrial wastewater)
3. Aerated lagoons
4. Constructed wetlands (also used for urban runoff)

Industrial wastewater treatment

1. API oil-water separators
2. Biofilters
3. Dissolved air flotation (DAF)
4. 4.Powdered activated carbon Treatment
5. Ultrafiltration
 Bibliography
En.wikipedia.org Google.com
Sciencedaily.com
Chem4kids.com
Sciencedirect.com
Dir.yahoo.com/Science/chemistry
Newspapers/Magazines etc.