What are the negative effects of using fossil fuels?
Answers
Answer:
Fuels such as coal, petroleum release unburnt particles in the environment. The particles result in air pollution and cause respiratory diseases such as respiratory illness, lung damage, ozone (smog) effect, reduces the ability of blood to bring oxygen to the blood cells and tissues, liver and kidney etc.
1 Air Pollution
Fossil fuels cause environmentally unsafe compounds to form in the atmosphere, depleting ozone levels and thus creating a spike in skin cancer rates. Burning coal releases sulfur oxide while the combustion of car engines and power plants gives off nitrogen oxides, which cause smog. Water and oxygen bonding with those sulfur and nitrogen oxides also causes acid rain, which damages plant life and food chains. Areas of high air pollution indexes have populations with higher rates of asthma than cleaner environments do.
2 Global Warming
Global warming occurs when carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere. Carbon monoxide is produced by the combustion of fossil fuels and converted into carbon dioxide. As a result, the surface temperature of the earth is increasing drastically. The increase is enough to distress the ecological systems. Implications include severe weather, droughts, floods, drastic temperature changes, heat waves, and more severe wildfires. Food and water supplies are threatened. Tropical regions will expand, allowing disease-carrying insects to expand their ranges.
3 Rising Sea Levels
The global warming caused by the use of fossil fuels leads to rising sea levels. The melting of ice at the poles and in glaciers can cause oceans to rise, which impacts both ecosystems and human settlements in low-lying areas. Since ice reflects sunlight and water absorbs it, the melting of ice also creates a feedback loop, causing global warming to speed up.