Air_Pollution

Air Pollution Air Pollution Air pollution also has a dramatic effect on natural resources. Ecosystems such as forests, wetlands, coral reefs, and rivers perform many important services for Earth's environment. They enhance water and air quality, provide habitat for plants and animals, and provide food and medicines. Any or all of these ecosystem functions may be impaired or destroyed by air pollution. Moreover, because of the complex relationships among the many types of organisms and ecosystems, environmental contamination may have far-reaching consequences that are not immediately obvious or that are difficult to predict. For instance, scientists can only speculate on some of the potential impacts of the depletion of the ozone layer, the protective layer in the atmosphere that shields Earth from the Sun's harmful ultraviolet rays. Another major effect of air pollution is the tremendous cost of air pollution cleanup and prevention. The global effort to control emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas produced from the combustion of fossil fuels such as coal or oil, or of other organic materials like wood, is one such example. The cost of maintaining annual national carbon dioxide emissions at 1990 levels is estimated to be 2 percent of the gross domestic product for developed countries. Expenditures air, pollution, rain, dioxide, carbon, percent, billion, layer, global, gases, forests, effect, ecosystems, cost, atmospheric, acid, year, wildlife, water, united, sun's, states, regions, reduce, rays, provide, production, pollutants, plants, ozone, one, lakes, known, increase, human, health