Pollution Study Guide
Land Pollution:
1. What is solid waste? ELIMINATE THIS QUESTION
2. What are the 2 deadly diseases that can happen as a result of waste being
thrown into the streets?
a. typhoid
b. cholera
3. What is land pollution? Any land contaminated with waste
4. What is a landfill? A place to discard waste by burying it and covering it over
with soil
5. What are 4 problems with landfills?
a. Space is limited
b. waste leads to roaches, rats and flies
c. produces very bad odors
d. can run off onto other parts of land or leach into the ground and
eventually reach the water table and contaminate drinking water
6. How do we prevent the gas build up in landfills? Install piping systems that
releases the methane gas to avoid explosion
7. What are hazardous wastes? Any solid, liuid or gas that is harmful to humans
even in small amounts
8. How are hazardous wastes classified? By the EPA into categories based on
their properties
9. What does EPA stand for and what is their job? Environmental Protection
Agency and they classify wastes and protect our environment by setting
standards and passing laws
10. Name, define AND give and example of each of the 5 classes of hazardous
wastes we spoke about.
a. Reactive – can explode – sodium metal, gun powder, oil, propane
b. Corrosive – eat away at materials is comes in contact with, including
steel – acids, batteries, bleach
c. Ignitable – can burst into flames – paint thinner, oil, cleaning supplies
d. Radioactive – releases radiation – mining materials, some medical
(treats cancer)
e. Medical – used syringes, blood, tissues, old medicine
11. What is a superfund? A program to help clean up the nations uncontrolled
hazardous waste sites
12. What was the first superfund? Love Canal in Niagra Falls, NY
13. Name 4 ways top soil can become eroded?
a. Clearing forests
b. overgrazing
c. bad farming practices
d. water loss
14. Name at least 3 ways we prevent land pollution? YOUR ANSWERS WILL
VARY HERE
15. Define waste exchange. Hazardous waste from one company is picked up by
a middleman and delivered to another company that can use it.
Air Pollution:
1. What is air pollution? Harmful materials that enter the environment and
released into the atmosphere
2. When did air pollution start to become a huge problem? At the start of the
industrial revolution
3. What 2 categories can air pollution be separated into?
a. Air particulates
b. gasses
4. What is photochemical smog? A yellow-brown haze that forms when
sunlight reacts with the pollutants in the air that come from vehicles
5. What are CFC’s? Clorfluorocarbons and they come from aerosol cans,
refrigerators and are used in making Styrofoam
6. What are CFC’s doing to our atmosphere? Depleating the ozone layer, when
the CFC’s reach the stratosphere the UV light breaks apart the molecule
releasing free Chlorine and Fluorine atoms which directly destroy ozone (O3)
7. What are 3 major GLOBAL pollution problems?
a. Acid precipitation
b. ozone depletion
c. global warming
8. What is the greenhouse effect? The trapping of radiated heat by gases in the
atmosphere
9. Why is the greenhouse effect ESSENTIAL FOR ALL LIFE? If we didn’t have
gases that trapped the heat, Earth would be too cold for life
10. What 1 greenhouse gas has drastically increased since the industrial
revolution? Carbon dioxide
11. What is the increase in CO2 doing to our planet? Where is it mostly coming
from? Making earth too warm---burning of fossil fuels
12. What is the purpose of the ozone layer? To protect us from UV rays
13. Ozone layer depletion is causing increase in skin cancer.
14. Greenhouse effect is causing
global warming .
15. What is acid rain? Rain or snow that is more acidic than normal and it is a
result of chemicals being released into the atmosphere
16. What is the Clean Air Act? A law passed to control air pollution on a national
level
Water Pollution:
1. What is water pollution? Contamination of any body of water
2. What is sewage? Water that carries organic wastes from humans and
industry
3. What is the purpose of a sewage treatment plant? To process raw sewage
before the sewage is returned to the surface water systems
4. What is eutrophication? Excess nutrients in a lake or body of water
5. What types of nutrients end up in the lakes and rivers in large amounts?
Phosphates and nitrates
6. Where do these nutrients come from? Pesticides used on farms
7. What is a pathogen? Anything that causes a disease
8. What are 3 types of pathogens?
a. parasite
b. bacteria
c. virus
9. From your projects you learned many different ways to treat water that has
been infected with pathogens. Name at least 3.
a. sanitize
b. treat with chlorine, UV radiation, ozone
c. boil
10. What are toxic chemicals? Elements and molecules that are directly harmful
to living things
11. What chemical mad hat makers “mad”? mercury
12. What is thermal pollution? A dramatic change in temperature due to human
activity
13. What does thermal pollution do to organisms in the lakes and ponds? BE
SPECIFIC. Suffocates them because hot temperature, especially, decreases
the amount of dissolved oxygen
14. What is the Clean Water Act? A law passes to set water quality standards for
all states