What is acid rain?

Acid? Rain?

You should definitely worry about it, but not in a way you think.

Acid rain may cause some itchiness if you get drenched in them, other than that there are no direct effects, but indirectly it is slowly affecting our ecosystem negatively.

What is acid rain?

Acid rain is a phenomenon where rain contains acidic compounds such as sulfuric acid and nitric acid along with them.

Why acid rain is an issue?

Acid rain, as per their name says, are acidic in nature due to compounds like sulfuric acid and nitric acid. When the phenomenon occurs, the acidic compounds get added into the soil and ocean, polluting land and water respectively.

There are billions of good bacteria in soil that are a part of our ecosystem. They take care of soil in many ways unknowingly, that is how ecosystem works. They help us in agriculture and food production. When the acidity of the soil increases or when the soil gets polluted, these bacteria may not sustain the change in the nature of soil and hence dies.

Acid rain also affects the acidity of oceans because of which the ecosystem of ocean gets affected. Effect on coral reefs and some types of planktons are very significant. Effect on ecosystem is like a vicious cycle, it forms a never ending chain.

Acid readily reacts with lot of things. Getting drenched in rain is unavoidable due to a lot of reasons, acid rain causes irritation to skin and eyes on contact. It reacts with outer layers of buildings, making them dull and weak over time.

Acid rain is considered to be a main reason behind The Taj Mahal getting dull. Acid reacts with white marble of which Taj Mahal is entirely made of, giving them a yellowish tint, making them dull over time.

What causes acid rain?

Although nature contributes to acid rain, its contribution is very small and is not significant. Some examples of nature’s contributions are volcanic eruptions.

The most important cause of acid rain is burning fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are burned to generate electricity, for example in diesel power plants. It is also used as fuels in almost all types of vehicles, factories and industries for various purposes.

When sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides that are emitted as a result of burning fossil fuels enter atmosphere, they are carried over by wind. This oxides react with water molecules in the clouds or water droplets in atmosphere to form sulfuric and nitric acids that comes down again as acid rain.

What differentiates normal rain and acid rain?

In order to understand the differentiation, we need to understand what pH scale is.

pH scale helps in measuring how acidic or basic a solution is. pH scale has readings 0 to 14 where 0 represents the most acidic solution like battery acid while 14 represents most basic solutions like liquid drain cleaner. 7 represents a neutral solution like distilled or pure water.

For comparison, normal rain will be somewhere around 5.6 while acid rain lies around 4.3 in the pH scale.

How acid rains can be minimized?

Reducing the amount of fossil fuels used has a huge impact in reducing acid rains.

• Encourage using public transports
• Avoid using personal vehicles unnecessarily
• Avoid using cars for single person travels
• Encourage usage of bicycles
• Support Electric cars (Although electricity is partly produced by burning fossil fuels now, future power production will not depend on fossil fuels by any means, believe in science)
• Love earth, we only have one as of now.

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