The Causes And Effects Of Air Pollution In South Africa

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Introduction
Air Pollution refers to a change in the composition of the atmospheric air caused by smoke, dust, and solid particles of any kind, gases, fumes, aerosols and odorous substances. Daly & Zannetti (2007) point out that air pollution includes the emission of any substance into the atmosphere from an anthropogenic, biogenic or geogenic source, and may potentially cause a short-term or long-term adverse impacts.
Substances that cause pollution are classified into primary and secondary pollutants. Primary Pollutants are the substances that are directly emitted into the atmosphere from sources. These substances include carbon compounds (CO & CO2), Sulphur compounds (SO2 & H2S), Nitrogen compounds (NO & N2O), Halogen compounds (Cl & Br) and particulate matter (PM) in solid or liquid state (Botkin & Keller, 2014). Secondary Pollutants are not directly emitted into the atmosphere but occur as a result of the interaction between the primary pollutants. Secondary pollutants include ozone (O3) resulting from photochemical reactions Nitrogen oxides as well as the acid rain (H2SO4) droplets from Sulphur dioxide.
South Africa has the largest industrialised economy in Africa that is heavily depended on mining. Much of the South African mineral resources is concentrated across the Gauteng, North-West, Mpumalanga and Limpopo provinces. With so much industrial activities in South Africa, emission of substances is inevitable however keeping those emissions within the acceptable

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