Is Pollution Worse in the Summer?

Oddly, air pollution isn’t always worse in the summer than in the winter. Often it can seem that way when previously healthy employees start coughing and spluttering by Wednesday. The rest of the workweek is then spent being attacked by pollution. Things like fireplaces and wood stoves release smoke into the atmosphere in winter. More idling cars lead to more carbon dioxide being pumped out of the exhaust.

This pollution, mostly nitrogen oxide, reacts with other chemicals and hydrocarbons in the sunlight to form ozone gas. Alarmingly, this can then mix with particulates in the air. This means that summer haze can be pretty nasty to your lungs. This is because you’re inhaling everything from the black emissions of a number 22 bus with dust cleaned from a window, all served in a lovely layer of ozone. Don’t forget that summer brings out ice cream trucks which primarily run on diesel; during the summer, these trucks need to stay running even when parked to keep the ice cream cool and refreshing. Unfortunately, that pumps more and more chemicals into the mix and adds to the summer air pollution.

High levels of ground-level ozone gas tend to irritate the lungs, inflaming them, as well as making life difficult for your eyes, nose and throat. When that happens, you’ll experience a tight chest and coughing. If you already have hayfever or asthma, this can make regular activities much more difficult than normal. Hopefully, with more and more people switching to electric or hybrid cars, air pollution will become less of a problem.

Such cars won’t totally rid the motoring world of pollution; powerplants still produce the electricity they use to keep running. But the growing acceptance of eco-friendly cars should mean that air pollution becomes much less of a problem for asthmatics or people with weak chests in the future. In the meantime, the only hope for summer air pollution to disappear is a big, crashing storm, preferably one with thunder and lightning. If you’ve ever heard people say that the air seems ‘fresher’ after a storm, that’s because it is. Stagnant air is where ozone gas squats. The fierce storm winds whisk away the stagnant ait. When it rains hard, the particulates that collect and bond with ozone to make it harder to breathe are broken up and washed away.

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