Essay Sample on Air Pollution

What is air pollution? To put it simply, air pollution is the disperse of toxins into the air which cancels out the oxygen that we need to breathe, for survival. There are several causes of air pollution but to name a few, wildfires and the combustion of fossil fuels are common ones. These can lead to both short and long term health effects among people and animals as well as a negative impact on agriculture.

Wildfires can occur by the actions of humans such as poor disposing of cigarettes or the burning of garbage. These fires affect the air as they release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This can create difficulty for persons to breathe properly as we usually exhale carbon dioxide from our body, not inhale it. Therefore, a person’s health can be temporarily or permanently affected. To explain further, wildfires result in smoke into the air which can cause asthma attacks, radiation of a person’s eyes, damage of lungs and even cancer. 

Another effect of air pollution is acid rain which is caused by harmful toxins being emitted into the atmosphere via the burning of fossil fuels. For example, nitrogen oxide is one of the gases released in this situation. When the rain falls, the water droplets fuse with the air pollutants, making the droplets acidic as it falls to the ground in the form of acid rain. This is dangerous to agriculture because if acid rain falls on the ground, it will damage soil and organisms that live in the soil and if it falls directly on plants, it may kill them. As a result, crops may be contaminated as well as there may be a reduction and this can create further health problems for humans and animals as they would be the consumers.

To conclude, air pollution causes great damage to wildlife, agriculture and humans. As seen, the smoke from wildfires degrades the health of people and acid rain, which is caused by the combination of smoke and rainfall, leads to harm to agriculture. It is important to acknowledge these causes and effects as they affect our quality of life, in terms of the air we breathe, a significant amount.