Scandinavia, acid rain

In addition to the damage acid rain causes to structures, acid rain also affects natural environments. Significant loss of spruce forests due to the burning of spruce needles by acid rain has occurred in Scandinavia. Acid rain also extracts a heavy toll on aquatic systems and associated organisms. Most adult fish cannot tolerate pHs much lower than 5.0, and even the most tolerant species will not survive below a pH of 4.0. Fish larvae are even more susceptible to low pH levels. Insects and their larvae also perish when pH approaches 4.0 in aquatic systems. Numerous lakes in upstate New... 

Acid rain is the popular term for a very complex environmental problem. Over the past 25 years, evidence has accumulated on changes in aquatic life and soil pH in Scandinavia, Canada, and the northeastern United States. Many believe that these changes are caused by acidic deposition traceable to pollutant acid precursors that result from the burning of fossil fuels. Acid rain is only one component of acidic deposition, a more appropriate description of this phenomenon. Acidic deposition is the combined total of wet and dry deposition, with wet acidic deposition being commonly referred to as acid rain. 

Acid rain. Lakes in some areas of the world are now registering very low pH s because of excess acidity in rain. This was first noticed in Scandinavia and is now prevalent in eastern Canada and the northeastern U.S. Normal rainfall is 5.6 (because of CO2 in the air forming H2CO3). However, excessive use of fossil fuels (especially coal) with high sulfur and nitrogen content cause sulfuric and nitric acids in the atmosphere from the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide products of combustion. Some rain in the Adirondack Mountains of upper New York State has been measured with a pH of 3.0. This problem is not specific to the chemical industry but should be of concern to all of us. 

Among the many dramatic effects of acid rain are the extinction of fish from acidic lakes throughout parts of the northeastern United States, Canada, and Scandinavia, the damage to forests throughout much of central and eastern Europe, and the deterioration everywhere of marble buildings and statuary. Marble is a form of calcium carbonate, CaC03, and, like all metal carbonates, reacts with acid to produce C02. The result is a slow eating away of the stone. 

The fallout of acid rains of surface waters has been studied for the last 15 years because of the impact on life in the lakes and rivers of Scandinavia, Scotland, and Canada as well as in the northeastern regions of the United States (Kramer and Tessier, 1982 Hilleman, 1983b). 

The acidity of rains — due both to S04 and NO3 — formed in the atmosphere — which may bring the pH of lakes to figures of 5-6 and even 4.5 is not the sole factor responsible for the toxicity of water for fishes, phytoplankton and zooplankton. In effect there are several chemical processes due to the interaction of acid rains and the soil, as well as the water of lakes. First of all it may occur that in the water, owing to the presence of carbonic acid system HC03"/(Na) (C03 ) may act as buffer in many lakes. This is not the case of the lakes in Scandinavia because the soil is mainly constituted by granites. 

By the time acid rain falls to the Earth s surface, the pollutants may have travelled long distances from their industrial sources so, for example, prevailing winds in Europe may carry SO2 from the UK, France and Germany to Scandinavia. 

Growing national concern that acid rain was killing off plant and aquatic life in Scandinavia s lakes and streams was a critical reason why Sweden initiated efforts to organize the first UNCHE and why Sweden became a pioneer in environmental reforms, opening the world s first Environment Agency in 1967. At the UNCHE, Swedish scientist Bert Bolin presented a case study of the effects of acid rain on Sweden. 

An Odd Couple The Soviet Union Joins Scandinavia in Caiiing for internationai Action on Acid Rain... 

This shift in German domestic politics was important at the European level as well since Germany, the largest economy in Europe, came to share Scandinavia s concern with acid rain. This enlarged coalition made possible the establishment of several important protocols to the CLRTAP as is discussed below. It is also noteworthy that German industry was eager to make sure that its competitors in Europe would face the same environmental... 

Also significant was the trans-Atlantic coalition that began to form between Canada and the Scandinavian countries. Canada was a victim of acid rain, some of it of its own making, but also considerable portions of which came from the United States. Much like Scandinavia was having troubles convincing the UK and the European continent to take decisive measures to reduce the pollutants causing acid rain, Canada could do little more than convince the United States to agree to conduct research on the causes and consequences of acid rain. 

Beginning in the 1970s, acid rain was identified as a serious issue in Europe, most prominently in Scandinavia and in the Black Triangle, a large swath of Poland, the Czech Republic, and southeastern Germany that suffered from acute forest damage induced by acid rain. Acid rain is a rapidly... 

Reports by Wood and Bormann (1977), and Wood and Pennypacker (1976) show that pine needles are rather insensitive to simulated acid rain. When these results are compared with those for foliage of birch (Wood and Bormann, 1974), maple (Wood and Bormann, 1975), poplar and oak, the foliage from broadleaved trees is injured to a greater extent. These results suggest that the deciduous forests of eastern North America would be more sensitive to acid precipitation than the predominantly coniferous forests of Scandinavia. More experimentation is necessary to make more definitive comparisons between deciduous and coniferous plant species. 

The point has also been made that although surveys based on the statements of 60 year old fishermen have shown reduced fish stocks in many lakes during the period 1940-1980 there are records which show that catches of salmon and trout in the seven most affected areas in S Norway have been decreasing since records were first analysed in the 1870 s. In other words acid precipitation has not been the only cause of disappearance of fish. Even so the bulk of the evidence would suggest that acid rain has been a major cause of decline in fish populations in the last 30 years in Scandinavia and in a few parts of the UK. 

The smoke and gas from coal-fired power stations is usually released into the air from very tall chimneys. For the people who live close to the power station this is beneficial but the acidic oxides can travel many hundreds of kilometres in the winds higher in the atmosphere. The oxides then give rise to acid rain in regions far from the power station. The death of lakes and forests in Germany and parts of Scandinavia (e.g. Sweden) were blamed on coal-fired power stations in the United Kingdom, which, at that time, had inefficient purification systems. Reducing this problem in the 1980s required international political cooperation. 

He would have been disappointed. More than a century later, the current Inspector-General of the Alkali Works described himself as "not concerned with the sulfur in Scandinavia." The chief of environmental studies at Britain s Central Electricity Generating Board could say curtly, "When people flick their light switches and nothing happens, all this nonsense about acid rain will stop." Across the Atlantic, President Reagan s chief of air pollution control, Kathleen Bennett, cautioned that action to reduce acid rain would be "premature." She explained, "Acid rain as a separate field of study is scarcely a decade old."... 

As discussed in Chapter 1, fish have been lost from several hundred acidified lakes and streams in the Adirondacks, Ontario and Nova Scotia, as well as in Scandinavia. The death of fish illustrates a particularly insidious aspect of acid rain the effects of acidity can be synergistic. For example, acidity can kill fish by interfering with the fish s salt balance by causing reproductive abnormalities by leaching aluminum into the lake at levels toxic to fish gills, so that the fish literally suffocate and by kUling the organisms on which fish feed. The combined effect of these stresses can wipe out a fish population. 

Toxic metals dissolved by acid rain have found their way into the food chain. Fish containing levels of mercury exceeding federal standards have been found in acidified lakes in New York, Maine, Canada, and Scandinavia. - An added concern is that the species of fish with the highest mercury levels — trout and pike — are the fish that tend to be eaten in large quantities. Re-... 

First, there would appear to be an apparent discrepancy in the fact that since 1974 acidity of rain in these areas has not increased (indeed sulphur emissions in Western Europe have fallen), but the trend to loss in fish populations in Scandinavia and Scotland has on the whole continued. This, on the face of it, can be explained by a continued leaching out of base cations and loss of buffering capacity from the top soils through which most of the run-off occurs, and the slow response time of fish populations in lakes to loss of spawning trout in tributory streams. However, at the same time an explanation must also be found for the following ... 

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