Acid Rain: An Overview of the Issues

Abstract

“Right as rain” and “pure as the driven snow” are expressions from a bygone era. Now the storms that sweep across eastern North America carry an acid rain — a rain gone sour. Tainted by pollution from the burning of fossil fuels, the rain is no longer “a kind physician”:

• • In New York State’s Adirondack Mountains — and elsewhere in the Northeast and Canada where the underlying soil and rocks have been unable to neutralize acid rain — hundreds of once-pristine lakes and streams have gradually grown acidic, and the aquatic life they sheltered has dwindled and vanished.

• • On the high ridges of the eastern U.S., from the Green Mountains of Vermont southward to the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, the morning mist may be as much as 100 to 1,000 times as acidic as unpolluted mist. Along parts of this mountainous spine, majestic stands of red spruce have virtually ceased growth.

• • In communities in the Northeast, water supplies have grown acidic and “aggressive,” dissolving lead and other toxic metals into drinking water.

“If there is life and death in the air, we must believe the same of rain ...”

R.A. Smith, 1872