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Summary: Pollution in the air can be caused by substances that are both man-made and natural compounds. Find out how air pollution can be caused by volcanic eruptions with help from the chair of a department of environmental studies in this free video on air pollution.
"Well, when you look at pollution and you look at what pollutes the air, the first thing you have to ask yourself is, what is a pollutant? You have to define what is a pollutant and there are lots of definitions of what a pollutant is. It's kind of one that's generally excepted, is a pollutant is anything that causes harm to plants or animals, causes harm to materials or will change climate. So anything that fits into that definition would be considered a pollutant. Now what do we have? Well, there's lots of things that fall into that category. And the things that fall in there are both man made and natural compounds. Everybody tends to think that pollutants are strictly anthropogenic, are strictly man made. But that's not true, there are things that are that are emitted into the atmosphere by natural processes, by volcanic activity, and so, that would be considered a pollutant. Something like the eruption of a volcano with big emittants of Sulfur Dioxide and Carbon Dioxide and a variety of acids that are thrown up. Hydrochloric acid, Sulphuric acid and so on, into the atmosphere by a totally natural process, would be considered a atmospheric pollutant. So it's a combination, when you look at pollution in the atmosphere, what is it? Well, it's obviously things that we make and we put out through smoke stacks and with industry and so on. But ti's also a wide variety of natural processes that cause, what we would consider pollution. Before there were people around, was there acid rain? Yes, there was, alright so, we had that type of pollution as a natural process. So you really have to, if you kind of look at a wide spectrum of components as far as what would be considered you know, a pollutant."
eHow Article: What Pollutes the Air?
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