GEOG 311 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Urban Air, Sumo Protein, Biochemical Oxygen Demand
Document Summary
Air pollution --> material gets into the atmosphere extremely quickly (by the hours and weeks) Can move away if there are any movement in the atmosphere cause of wind. Water pollution --> moderately fast (years to decades) If you put material into the water, you can really damage the aquatic system. Soil pollution --> processes on soils are relatively slow (compared to air), decades to centuries. Concentration: the mass of a pollutant contained in unit volume of the environment. Exposure: amount of time a person is affected by a particular pollutant. Dose: amount of a pollutant received (i. e. taken up) by a subject, physiology also plays a part. Industrial waste dumps and landfills --> essentially these chemicals are dumped into sites. Central city has high concentrations of toxic metals (e pb, zn, fe --> lead, zinc) Main sources are from aerosols which are emitted by industry and traffic, these are deposited on surface and soils.
