空气污染1000字英文论文

Improve Air Quality——Everyone Should Get Involved Background information:

My neighborhood is a rural area in Nantong City, Jiangsu Province. Almost each family there has a piece of farmland of their own. At the beginning, residents made a living mostly by eating food produced by them and selling extra food. Recently as economy grows, more and more residents have chosen to rent their farmland out to make space for factories, at the same time they can get an opportunity to work in factories. Generally speaking, this area is still in its early stage of industrialization. Just like many other places which have gone through or are undergoing industrialization, my neighborhood also faces the conflict between economic growth and environment protection. In addition, residents there sometimes do activities which damage the environment even without realization due to poor knowledge of the causes of environmental unsustainability. One of the most serious aspects of the environment is the decline in air quality. My neighborhood used to have fresh air, but now smog appears from time to time. So in this report, I am going to focus on air pollution in my neighborhood.

Causes and solutions:

1. Industrial pollution

Just as stated above, my neighborhood is in its early stage of industrialization, so air pollution there must have a close relation with industrial wastes. On the one hand, factories are continuously producing air-borne emissions. Among them, factories such as the rubber factory give out waste gases with an unpleasant smell, which is particularly unbearable to people living nearby. On the other hand, large area of farmland and woods are turned into industrial land, thus causing a weakened function of vegetation purifying air. Although there are many examples that cities go for economic growth in sacrifice of environment and repair the environment after becoming rich, we need not necessarily repeat the model of “pollution first, treatment later” in the course of industrialization. I think we can report those factories to local environmental protection agency, forcing them to release waste gases after treating through legal procedures. We can also use the power of public opinion by posting those factories onto “weibo”.

2. Straw burning

Picture 1(taken in May, 2013)

It is not uncommon to see people burning crop straw in rural area. Such behavior is harmful to both environment and society for the following reasons. First, when burning straw, the three pollution index of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and repairable particulate matter in the atmosphere reaches peak, which damages human health. Secondly, straw burning can easily cause fire if there are combustibles around. Thirdly, poor visibility caused by smog leads to more cases of traffic accidents. Last but not least, straw burning can cause ground temperature to rise rapidly, killing beneficial microbes in soil, affecting the full absorption of plant to soil nutrients, decreasing the yield of crop. Actually,

“In Jiangsu Province, the local government has sent supervision teams to all

cities to monitor straw burning. Furthermore, in order to extend the scope of

the monitoring, the provincial environmental protection agency begun to use

remote sensing data to detect locations of fire in straw fields. Unfortunately,

supervision is difficult and to avoid detection, some farmers choose to not

burn straw during daytime but in the evening or on cloudy days.”(Qu, Li,

Wu&Giesy, 2012)