Birmingham Friends of the Earth

Who are we?

What do we do?

What is air pollution?Discussion in groups

Pollution The process of making the air, water or soil dirty.

Pollutants A substance that makes the air, water or soil dirty.

Contaminated Something that has been made dirty by pollutants.

Harmful Will cause something or someone to be hurt.

Environment The natural world of the land and sea and air.

Fossil fuels Fuel formed from the remains of dead animals and plants for example coal and gas.

The answers

What is air pollution?

Air pollution is anything that causes the air to become contaminated with pollutants.

What are the pollutants?

Most pollutants are much too small to see without a microscope, but they still

get into our lungs and affect our health. The main nasty pollutants in the UK are O3, SO2, NO2, PM2.5 and

PM10.

We are going to measure 1 of these:N02

How does air pollution affect us?

•Affect your immune system, so that you can catch infections more easily.

•Make you cough, splutter, wheeze, sneeze, dizzy and it can make your eyes itch.

• Give you green snot, and more bogeys than your nostrils have space for.

• Pollution can be blamed for an estimated 200 premature deaths in the capital each year. An additional 1,200 or so serious health incidents requiring hospital admission can be attributed to pollution.

How is air pollution caused?

Write down your ideas

How is air pollution caused?

Can you think of anything that could make air quality worse?

How do you think we could measure air pollution?

Where do you think air pollution would be worse?

Where do you think air pollution would be worse?

Where shall we put the tubes?

What do we need to record as we put out the tubes?

Recap:

•What are we measuring?

•How are we measuring it?

•What do you expect to find?

Next Steps:

•We will collect the tubes in 2 weeks.

•We will send them to a lab to be analysed.

•We will come back with the results.

•You can think of solutions to air pollution!

See you in four weeks!