APES Air Pollution Mysteries

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Can you solve these air pollution mysteries?

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Sally is visiting Lake Tahoe at ~6,000 feet and loves being among the conifer trees. They smell so good! It’s a bright sunny day and many people are driving around the scenic lake loop. Sally notices a beautiful blue haze filling the valleys. The more Sally runs up and down the trail, the worse Sally’s lungs feel. Sally gets an asthma attack. Luckily a friendly rabbit offers to share its inhaler with Sally.

Rn-222 (radon)

O3/ photochemical smog

PM and CO

Answer

Rn-222 (radon)

O3/ photochemical smog

PM and CO

Sky has been having trouble with zir natural gas heater. It keeps burning through natural gas, but it’s not keeping the house as warm as it used to. Sky’s dog, Ford, wakes zir up in the night. Ford is freaking out. Sky has a splitting headache. (Sky doesn’t know it, but oxygen isn’t bonding well to zir hemoglobin.) Ford insists they leave the house. As they leave the house, zir headache clears. If Ford hadn’t woken Sky up, Sky would probably have died. Sky looks at reviews of [pollutant] detectors and installs one in her home. Ford gets a big steak.

Rn-222 (radon)

Ground Level Ozone

Carbon Monoxide

Answer

Rn-222 (radon)

Ground Level Ozone

Carbon Monoxide

Bai Chunxue, the head of respiratory medicine at Shanghai’s Zhongshan Hospital, sees the ever worsening haze as the upcoming cause of many deaths. To protect himself, Chunxue wears a facemask on his walk to work (less than one mile) and has moved his apartment to the 37th floor (as this pollution is the worst between 10th and 20th floors). He worries about dust that is fine enough to get through the face mask and settle in his lungs and heart. He advocates that the Chinese government close or relocate factories close to Beijing. Another doctor in Northern China just diagnosed the youngest person to be diagnosed with lung cancer at just eight years old. Someone else, Zhong Nanshan, found that cardiovascular failure increased 1.28% for every increase of 10 micrograms of [mystery pollutant] per meter3.

PM 2.5

Nitrous Oxide

CFCs

Answer

PM 2.5

Nitrous Oxide

CFCs

Gaia’s house has an old shed in back. Sometimes, Gaia and her sisters will go play in the shed. There is paint peeling off the walls. Gaia and her sisters have fun peeling the paint of the walls. One of them notices that the paint tastes sweet. The kids take turns peeling off the longest strips possible and eating them. When Gaia returns to school that fall, she has trouble focusing. She gets irritated more easily and no one wants to be her friend. Gaia can’t process words like she used to, and she has trouble reading chapter books.

Lead

Arsenic

Mercury

Answer

Lead

Arsenic

Mercury

There was a forest fire on the other side of the ridge from Philly’s pond. Philly did see the lightening and felt the rain pattering on the surface of his lake. Now the water feels terrible. Mucus forms in Philly’s gills and it's harder to breathe. Philly’s cells don’t maintain their electrolyte and fluid balance. Philly’s fertilized fish eggs don’t hatch.

Mercury

NOx / SO2

Formaldehyde

Answer

Mercury

NOx / SO2

Formaldehyde

Prudence lives in rural Zambia. She cooks most of her family’s food over a brazier. Sometimes she can afford charcoal, but mostly she uses dried cow manure, leaves of banana plants, and sticks. On nice days, she cooks outside. During the rainy season, she sometimes cooks inside. She bends low over the pot to taste food, make sure it doesn’t burn, and blow on the coals to restoke them. The smoke from the fire makes her eyes water and her lungs burn. While she cooks, she keeps her infants strapped to her back and her young children nearby so she can keep an eye on them. There are two major pollutants that will cause her and her children to have respiratory issues, headaches, dizziness, nausea. Both of these can cause death, especially to infants and children under 5 years old.

CO and PM

NOx and PM

CO2 and PM

CO and PM

VOCs and PM

CO2 and PM

Amal moved to North Dakota and is shopping for a home. He finds a home with a big basement where he can hold foosball parties and store his collection of airline barf bags. (He is trying to beat the world record to 6,290 air sickness bags.) The house is cheap. The owner passed away from lung cancer. Amal’s real estate agent suggests he test the house for [pollutant]. Once Amal does, he finds that levels are high. If he buys the house, he must seal cracks in the basement and increase ventilation in the house. So much for foosball parties…

Rn-222 (Radon)

VOCs

Formaldehyde

Answer

Rn-222 (Radon)

VOCs

Formaldehyde

Fremont High School was built in the 1960’s. The insulation in the building has gotten old, and it was time to be replaced. However, the school district hired the cheapest contractors, without examining their credentials. Years later, many people who at attended or worked at the school had lung cancer and other respiratory diseases.

Asbestos

Mold

Particulate Matter

Answer

Asbestos

Mold

Particulate Matter

On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens (a volcano in Washington) erupted, throwing huge ash clouds into the air. In the weeks after the eruption, there was an increase of patients to local hospitals who had asthma and bronchitis. Researchers, such as Baxter et al. (1983) found that the increased exacerbating factor was the airborne suspended [pollutant] after the eruption.

Mercury

Particulate matter

NOx and VOCs

NOx and VOCs

Mercury

Particulate matter

In LA during WWII, the brown-colored smog grew so dense, people thought that Japanese had attacked them with chemicals. Many people who grew up there reported that it “hurt to breathe” and would get teary eyes on bad days. It was hard to get air pollution legislation in California and the U.S. because the car industry didn’t want to be blamed and people were scared that new catalytic converters that removed [pollutant] from emissions would make cars too expensive. (Plus people didn’t understand the connection because auto emissions were clear and the smog was brown.) Haagen-Smit, a biologist studying the flavor of pineapples, found the connection. But, the oil and automobile industries funded the Stanford Research Institute to discredit Haagen-Smit. At one point, someone offered to disprove Haagen-Smit’s findings by voluntarily sitting in his plexiglass smog chamber. This person got bronchitis. Haagen-Smit continued his research so that by the 1950’s the connection was clear. Activists groups sprang up and clamored for pollution control legislation. From this and other pollution crises, the Clean Air Act was born.

NOx and VOCs leading to photochemical smog

Particulate matter

SOx

NOx and VOCs leading to photochemical smog

Particulate matter

SOx

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