Pollution
Pollution
Introduction
Air pollution is a major problem in today's world. The purpose of this project is to analyze the levels of certain air pollutants in Illinois throughout nine months. Studying air pollution is important because it can be harmful to life and contribute to global warming. The pollutants that we looked at were SO2, NO2, O3, and CO. Data was gathered from the online source data.world. We used the average daily amount of units of pollutant that was detected per day that was given by the data set to find the monthly average for the nine months per pollutant. The data set that we selected included information for the whole country rather than just Illinois. We decided to cut down the data to only Illinois because even with just Illinois we felt that we had more than enough data. One possible solution to the air pollution problem is to use green energy sources because the production of energy is one of the largest contributors to the pollution problem.
Data Visualizations
SO2
SO2 or Sulfur dioxide had two outlier points being February and March. It is interesting that both outlier points occur simultaneously. Other than these two points, the overall trend of the data is staying the same. SO2 is emitted from fossil fuels and other sulfur containing materials being burned. Sulfur is also naturally occurring in the atmosphere in small amounts due to volcanic activity.
NO2
The overall trend for NO2 was a slight decrease with one outlier being March. NO2 is also known as nitrogen dioxide. The main sources of NO2 in the environment come from burning fuels in power plants and in car/truck engines. Exposure to NO2 can cause asthma or other similar respiratory conditions. In the environment, NO2 can cause acid rain, hazy air conditions, and nutrient pollution of coastal waters. A safe level of NO2 is around 20 parts per billion. All the values that we found were below 20 parts per billion. NO2 is also one of the major greenhouse gasses.
O3
O3 or ozone, had the overall trend of increasing. It had no outliers but the period that saw the largest growth was from February to March. Ozone naturally occurs in the upper atmosphere as well as on the ground level. Ozone in the upper atmosphere is generally a good thing because it protects the planet from uv rays coming from the sun. Ground level ozone can cause many negative symptoms like asthma, chest pain, and airway inflammation. The safe level of Ozone is below 1 part per billion. Ozone is not directly emitted from burning fossil fuels, but it is the product of chemical reactions from those reactions and naturally occurring compounds and light. This could explain why there is an increase in ozone levels. It is likely that if the data continued into the winter when there is normally less light, the data would show that the ozone levels would go back down to where they started.
CO
CO or Carbon monoxide showed an overall trend of decreasing. July is an interesting month in this data set because after being the second month of decreasing amounts of Carbon monoxide, it starts increasing again for the last two months. Carbon monoxide is released whenever something is burned, not just fossil fuels. Car/truck engines are the main sources of carbon monoxide pollution. Carbon monoxide inhalation can cause minor symptoms like dizziness or confusion to death. The maximum recommended amount of Carbon monoxide is around 25 parts per million. Side effects from Carbon monoxide are very rare to happen outside of an enclosed space with Carbon monoxide.
Conclusion