Question

How does acid rain affect humans and the environment?

Answer 1

Hint: The effects that acid rain makes on crops, trees and many resources this can destroy the livelihood of many people. Many people get affected by acid rain so yes we can say it affects the environment and humans, not directly but indirectly. The main cause of acid rain and many resulting phenomena related to it are due to pollution.

Complete step-by-step answer:
We enjoy rain, but acid rain is different when rain gets contaminated by pollutants in the environment and its $pH$ changes. We know that in $pH$ scale the solution or the system for which we are measuring the acidic strength have values less than seven for acidic solutions and values greater than seven for basic solutions. So, when the pollution increases in the atmosphere, the amount of content of sulphur, nitrogen, carbon increase in the form of oxides which makes the normal rain acidic.

When we hear the word acidic the first thing that comes in our mind is, the strong acids that we generally use in laboratories the acid rain is different from it. Acid precipitation is different from that, it does not affect human health and not even burns the skin. It has a very low $pH$ . But we cannot say there are not indirect effects of acid rain, there are many diseases like asthma or bronchitis which generally happens when we inhale the air having bad air qualities.

In the environment, acid rain has more concentrated effects when acid rain happens on trees and crops it harms them. It leaches minerals such as aluminum from soil and also decreases the $pH$ making the soil acidic. If we take perspective for crops, soil acidity is not good for crop growth.

Note: We know that the main cause of acid rain and many resulting phenomena related to it are due to pollution. When the concentration of nitrogen oxide, sulphur oxide and many more chemical compounds which exhaust from industries, vehicles etc. These get into the air and make it acidic. So remember that the main reason for acid rain is an increase in pollution.