ABSTRACT
Air pollution due largely to the profligate consumption of fossil fuels causes great damage to health and property in cities. The chronic exposure of ecosystems in remote regions to low levels of pollution affects the health of those ecosystems, but it is often difficult or impossible to obtain direct proof of this fast enough to provide for their protection. Pollutants released into the atmosphere disperse even faster than those released into water, and may travel entirely around the Earth in a matter of days if they are emit much ground level. In the long run, the key criterion for evaluating the impact of air pollution on the quality of air is the extent to which pollutants significantly affect people’s health or the biosphere’s ecological balance. Some pollutants have chemical properties similar to those of naturally occurring substances; hence, they may be difficult to identify through chemical analysis.
