Criteria Pollutants
The Clean Air Act of 1970 designated this many "criteria pollutants" for regulation.
6
This type of pollutant is released directly into the air in a harmful form.
Primary Pollutant
This phenomenon occurs when a stable layer of cold air rests near the ground with warmer layers above, trapping pollutants.
Temperature Inversions
This international agreement, produced in 1987, aimed to phase out the use of CFCs to protect the ozone layer.
Montreal Protocol
This device uses a water spray to "wash" pollutants out of gas before it leaves a smokestack.
In the original 1977 Star Wars movie, what is the name of Han Solo’s iconic ship?
The Millennium Falcon
This criteria pollutant is a colorless, odorless, and highly toxic gas that binds irreversibly to hemoglobin in the blood.
Carbon Monoxide
A specific, identifiable origin of pollution, such as a smokestack or pipe, is known as this.
Point Source
While normal rain is slightly acidic (pH 5.6), industrial emissions can acidify precipitation to this pH level or lower.
pH 4
This city, once one of the world's most polluted, saw improvements after requiring buses and taxis to switch to compressed natural gas (CNG).
Delhi, India
This technology, required for automobiles in Delhi in the 1990s, helps reduce harmful emissions from exhaust.
Catalytic converter
Which European city is famously built on a series of 118 small islands separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges?
Venice, Italy
These two sectors are the dominant sources of most criteria pollutants.
Transportation and Power Plants
These "unconventional" pollutants are produced in lower volumes but are especially toxic, including substances like asbestos, mercury, and benzene
Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs)
This condition describes cities being frequently warmer than the surrounding countryside due to concrete surfaces and low albedo.
Urban Heat Island
Seven of the ten cities in the world with the worst air quality are currently located in this country.
China
Long-lasting or permanent health effects from exposure.
Chronic
In Greek mythology, who was the hero who flew too close to the sun, causing his wax wings to melt?
Icarus
Despite a 30-year decline in other criteria pollutants like Carbon Monoxide and Sulfur Dioxide due to the Clean Air Act, this specific pollutant is the only criteria pollutant to have been nearly eliminated from the air not by power plant scrubbers, but by the transition of a fuel source.
Lead
This reddish-brown gas gives photochemical smog its distinctive color.
Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2)
This term refers to emissions that do not go through a smokestack, such as gas leaking from a valve or dust from a mine.
Fugitive Emissions
This persistent neurotoxin is primarily released by coal-burning power plants and accumulates in top predator fish like tuna
Mercury
This historical air quality disaster led to major legislation like the Clean Air Act
The Great Smog of London (or Donora Smog)
This device can remove up to 99% of unburned particulates from industrial emissions using electrical charges
Electrostatic precipitator
Which famous Dutch painter famously cut off his own left ear during a mental breakdown in 1888?
Vincent van Gogh
This criteria pollutant is a secondary pollutant created by chemical reactions initiated by solar energy.
Ground-level Ozone
This self-reported inventory helps inform communities about toxic substances produced and handled in their area by thousands of factories and refineries.
Toxic Release Inventory (TRI)
The most common route of exposure to air pollutants for humans is:
Inhalation
This market-based approach allows facilities to buy and sell permitted allotments of pollutants to meet overall emission goals.
Cap-and-trade
Convection currents and stable air trapping pollutants.
Dust Dome
What is the specific name for the "point of no return" surrounding a black hole, beyond which nothing—not even light—can escape?
The Event Horizon