Why does the country attach so much importance to air pollution prevention and control?

The reason why the country attaches so much importance to the prevention and control of air pollution is that air pollution is very harmful.

Hazards of air pollution:

Hazards to the human body

The harms of air pollution experienced by humans were initially mainly harmful to human health, and then gradually Various hazards to industrial and agricultural production and adverse effects on weather and climate were discovered. In-depth research on the mechanism, distribution and scale of harm caused by air pollutants has provided the necessary basis for the control and prevention of air pollution. After air pollution, due to differences in the source, nature, concentration and duration of pollutants, differences in meteorological conditions, geographical environment and other factors in the polluted areas, and even differences in people's age and health status, different harms will be caused to each person.

The impact of air pollution on the human body is first to feel uncomfortable, and then there will be a reversible physiological reaction, and then there will be acute harmful symptoms. The harm of air pollution to humans can be roughly divided into three types: acute poisoning, chronic poisoning, and carcinogenesis.

(1) Acute poisoning

When the concentration of pollutants in the air is low, it usually does not cause acute poisoning of the human body. However, under certain special conditions, such as factories, Special accidents during the production process, large amounts of harmful gases leaking out, sudden changes in external weather conditions, etc. can cause acute poisoning of people. For example, the leakage of methyl isocyanate from Pabol Pesticide Factory in India directly harmed the human body, killing 2,500 people and injuring more than 100,000 people.

(2) Chronic Poisoning

The chronic toxic effects of air pollution on human health are mainly manifested in the illness that occurs after pollutants act continuously on the human body at low concentrations for a long time. rate increases, etc. The incidence of lung cancer among urban residents in China is very high, with the highest incidence rate in Shanghai. Respiratory diseases among urban residents are significantly higher than those in suburban areas.

(3) Carcinogenesis

This is the result of long-term effects. It is due to pollutants acting on the body for a long time, damaging the genetic material in the body and causing mutations. If the germ cells mutate If it causes various abnormalities in the offspring's body, it is called teratogenesis; if it causes sudden changes in the genetic material and genetic information of the organism's cells, it is also called mutagenesis; if it induces tumors, it is called carcinogenesis. The "cancer" referred to here includes benign tumors and malignant tumors. Carcinogens in the environment can be divided into chemical carcinogens, physical carcinogens, biological carcinogens, etc. The process of carcinogenesis is quite complex and generally has an initiation stage and a growth promotion stage. Factors that can induce tumors are collectively called carcinogens. Tumors caused by long-term exposure to carcinogens in the environment are called environmental tumors. Air pollution will reduce human life span.

Atmospheric pollutants are mainly divided into harmful gases (carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, photochemical smog, halogen elements, etc.) and particulate matter (dust, acid mist, aerosols, etc.). Their main sources are factory emissions, vehicle exhaust, farmland burning, forest fires, cooking smoke (including roadside barbecues), dust (including construction sites), etc.

Hazards to industry and agriculture

Air pollution has serious harm to industrial and agricultural production. These harms can affect economic development and cause massive losses of human, material and financial resources. There are two main types of harm caused by air pollutants to industry: First, acidic pollutants, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, etc. in the atmosphere corrode industrial materials, equipment and building facilities; second, the increase in flying dust affects the production of precision instruments and equipment. , adverse effects caused by installation, debugging and use. The harm of air pollution to industrial production from an economic point of view is that it increases production expenses, increases costs, and shortens the service life of products.

Air pollution also causes great harm to agricultural production. Acid rain can directly affect the normal growth of plants, and can also cause acidification of soil and water bodies and the dissolution of toxic components by seeping into soil and water bodies, thereby poisoning animals, plants and aquatic organisms. Severe acid rain will cause forest decline and fish extinction.

Hazards to the climate

Atmospheric pollutants also affect weather and climate. Particulate matter reduces atmospheric visibility and reduces the amount of solar radiation reaching the ground. Especially in large industrial cities, when smog persists, daylight is reduced by 40% compared to normal conditions. Pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons and chlorofluorocarbons in the upper atmosphere decompose ozone in large quantities, causing the "ozone hole" problem, which has become the focus of global attention.

Most of the particulate matter emitted into the atmosphere from factories, power stations, cars, and household small coal stoves has the function of water vapor condensation nuclei or freezing nuclei. These particles can absorb water vapor in the atmosphere and condense it into water droplets or ice crystals, thus changing the original precipitation (rain, snow) conditions in the area. People have found that in downwind areas not far from large industrial cities, precipitation is higher than in other surrounding areas. This is the so-called "Laporte effect." If acidic pollutants are carried in the center of the particles, then downwind areas may be affected by acid rain.

In addition to its adverse effects on weather, air pollution also has an impact on global climate that has gradually attracted people's attention. The strengthening of the greenhouse effect caused by the increase in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is the most important impact on global climate. Earth's climate warming will bring many adverse effects to the human ecological environment, and humans must be fully aware of this.

Rivers dry up, forests decrease, animals become extinct, the ozone layer is destroyed, the greenhouse effect and so on. The greenhouse effect, acid rain, and ozone layer destruction are environmental effects derived from air pollution. This kind of environmental effect derived from environmental pollution has a hysteretic nature and is often not easy to detect or predict when the pollution occurs. However, once it occurs, it means that the environmental pollution has developed to a quite serious level. Of course, the most direct and easily felt consequence of environmental pollution is the degradation of the quality of the human environment, affecting human quality of life, health and production activities. For example, urban air pollution causes air pollution and increases people's morbidity rates; water pollution worsens the quality of the water environment and generally reduces the quality of drinking water sources, threatening people's health and causing premature birth or malformation of fetuses. Serious pollution incidents not only bring health problems, but also cause social problems. With the intensification of pollution and the improvement of people's environmental awareness, disputes and conflicts among people caused by pollution are increasing year by year. Environmental pollution problems have occurred to varying degrees around the world. Aspects with global impact include atmospheric environmental pollution, ocean pollution, urban environmental problems, etc. With the globalization of economy and trade, environmental pollution has increasingly shown an international trend, and the emergence of the problem of transboundary transfer of hazardous waste is a prominent manifestation in this regard. The adverse effects of the destruction of the earth on humans include: the ecological environment situation is very severe. First, serious water and soil erosion, accelerated land desertification, decline in forest ecological functions, degradation of grassland resources, and still deteriorating aquatic ecological environment systems; second, The water environment in agriculture and rural areas is seriously polluted, and food safety problems are becoming increasingly prominent. The third is the invasion of harmful alien species, the sharp decline in biodiversity, the loss of genetic resources, and the destruction of biological resources. The situation is not optimistic. The fourth is that due to China's large population, the natural population growth rate is relatively high, leading to a continuous decline in the per capita share of important resources related to the national economy and people's livelihood, and the emergence of a resource crisis; fifth, ecological functions continue to decline, ecological security is threatened, industrial solid waste production increases sharply, and total air pollution emissions are still at a high level , global warming, ozone layer destruction, etc. The current situation of the ecological environment not only brings huge destructive power to the ecological environment, but also restricts the coordinated development of economy and society and slows down the process of socialism. First of all, the huge damage to the ecological environment has caused us huge economic losses. Take the floods that occur every year in China as an example. After a disaster, tens of thousands of people leave us forever, large numbers of people become homeless, countless beautiful homes are destroyed, and countless fertile fields are destroyed. Being flooded, coupled with the traffic interruption caused by road damage, etc., let us carefully estimate whether we have suffered huge economic losses? Secondly, the arbitrary discharge of waste water, waste gas, waste residue and other wastes has led to pollution of the atmosphere, rivers, and land, and serious damage to the ecological environment. It has also seriously damaged the physical and mental health of the people; thirdly, due to the destruction of vegetation Severe damage has resulted in serious soil erosion and increasingly serious land desertification, forcing many farmers to move away from home, and most of them have no fixed place to live, which aggravates social instability. In fact, there are many negative consequences caused by the destruction of the environment. ②Causes of environmental pollution Generally speaking, environmental pollution can be the result of human activities, the result of natural activities, or the result of the simultaneous action of these two types of activities. Such as volcanic eruptions, which emit large amounts of dust and sulfur dioxide and other harmful gases into the atmosphere, also causing pollution to the atmospheric environment. But usually, environmental pollution is caused more by human activities, especially socioeconomic activities. What we usually refer to is this type of environmental pollution originating from human activities. The reason why human activities cause environmental pollution is because there is a fundamental difference between humans and other organisms: in addition to their own production, humans also engage in larger-scale material production, and the latter is something that all other organisms do not have. Due to this, the intensity of human activities is much greater than that of other living things. For example, when it comes to the use of water in an ecosystem, other organisms only use the amount that meets their survival requirements, while humans use water many times more than other organisms, so much so that some local ecosystems use all the water. Not enough. The emission sources of pollutants are called pollution sources. The situation of various pollution sources will be described in Section 4. Environmental pollution can be classified from different perspectives. According to the type of the polluted environmental system or the dominant factors in it, it can be divided into air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, etc.; according to the social field where the pollution source is located, it can be divided into industrial pollution, agricultural pollution, traffic pollution, etc.; According to the form or nature of pollutants, it can be divided into waste gas pollution, waste water pollution, solid waste pollution, noise pollution, radiation pollution and other pollution.

Harm to plants

Atmosphere The pollutants in the leaves mainly enter the leaves through the stomata and dissolve in the mesophyll tissue. They affect the physiological and metabolic activities of the plants through a series of biochemical reactions, so plant damage symptoms generally appear on the leaves. Depending on the pollutants, the symptoms of plant damage are also different.

Current situation in China:

The level of air pollution in our country is becoming more and more serious. However, in my country’s environmental governance, only water pollution and solid waste management have a high degree of marketization, while others such as air pollution are highly market-oriented. Since pollution control is easily affected by weather and moves between different regions, the government has always been less enthusiastic about air pollution control, and this part of the market is also relatively weak.

However, with the occurrence of a large number of haze weather in North China, this phenomenon has aroused social concern about air pollution. In fact, our country has successively launched air pollution prevention and control work as early as a few years ago. Since 2002, our country has introduced various policies to increase energy conservation and emission reduction. For example, the " "Technical Policy for the Prevention and Control of Sulfur Dioxide Emission Pollution from Coal Burning", the policy provides detailed provisions on the rational utilization of energy, coal production, processing and supply, coal combustion, flue gas desulfurization, and secondary pollution prevention and control. In August 2012, my country released the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan for Energy Saving and Emission Reduction", which proposed specific development goals for the desulfurization and denitrification efficiency of the power and non-power industries. The above energy conservation and emission reduction policies have played a certain role in promoting the prevention and control of air pollution in my country. Analysts believe that my country's current air pollution mainly comes from industrial emissions. The latest data shows that in 2011, the power industry accounted for 47.52% of my country's industrial sulfur dioxide emissions, while sulfur dioxide emissions from the steel, cement, building materials, and non-ferrous metallurgical industries The amounts reached 10.64%, 13.26%, and 6.04% respectively. From the perspective of my country's air pollution emissions, from 2000 to 2011, China's industrial waste gas emissions grew at an average annual rate of 19.06%, from 13,814.5 billion standard cubic meters in 2000 to 67,450.9 billion standard cubic meters in 2011, an increase of 11 years. 2.39 times.

Therefore, air pollution prevention and control work is imperative and must be paid attention to!

Reference link: Air Pollution_Baidu Encyclopedia

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