Acid Rain

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Mayumi Nakazawa. Today I want to talk about acid rain. I'm interested in Acid Rain because I found that the rain falling all over the land of Japan was slightly acid according to the investigation in 1997 and I felt it was scary. I am going to cover three points. First I will talk about what Acid Rain is. Then I will cover what Acid Rain has done. Finally I will tell you about possible solutions.

 

First I will talk about what Acid Rain is. According to the Environmental Protection Agency Acid rain is rainfall that has been acidified. Rain is acidified by oxides of sulfur and nitrogen. Acid rain usually has a pH of less than 5.6. Acid rain is formed when pollutants called oxides of sulfur and nitrogen contained in power plant smoke factory smoke, and car exhaust react with the moisture in the atmosphere.

 

I have covered what Acid Rain is now I will talk about what Acid rain has done.

There are many bad things that have happened because of acid rain. In Sweden, drinking water once contained enough acid to make people's hair turn green. In the Czech Republic, many trees lost all their leaves as a result of acid rain. The Taj Mahal in India is being constantly threatened by acid rain. Some famous statues, such as the Lincoln Memorial and Michelangelo's statue of Marcus Aurelius, have started deteriorating because of acid rain. In London in 1952, very thick acid smog killed 4,000 people.

 

I have talked about what Acid rain is and what Acid rain has done, finally I will tell you about possible solutions.

We can do things to help solve the acid rain problem. We can cut back on car use by walking, cycling and using public transit. We can also help by turning off electrical devices not in use such as lights and computers.

 

To summarize, I have talked about what is Acid Rain, what Acid Rain has done and possible solutions. Please remember that bad things happening because of acid rain in various countries may happen in Japan. So we have to do things we can do in the near future to minimize the amount of sulfur dioxide or nitrogen in the atmosphere.

Thank you for listening. Are there any questions?

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