There's no watering it down- New data collected by our class may rain on your parade (Soil Leaching)

So just what is all this talk on the news of "Acid Rain" and Carbon dioxide emissions. I mean, in our everyday life, do these concerns of supposed experts hold any bearing on how we are to live our lives? So what if company X or Y is so called "polluting" our atmosphere- what does that even mean? Well our soil leaching lab that our Environmental Chemistry class performed, we collected data to asses just what is going on in our soil and how it is affected by the seemingly irrelevant concept of pollution. First lets talk CO2. How exactly does the crap that comes out of my car become a killer of aquatic life? Lets have a look at this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aEx067YkDE. In this video we see how different forms of man-made pollution contributes to the growing acidity of soil and the inevitable damage to aquatic life. The excess carbon dioxide steals an oxygen from water and becomes a weak acid- meaning that it's not ugly enough where its going to repulse the sexy hydrogen atoms away, but is mildly attractive to the point where it can hold a mediocre relationship with some fine hydrogen atoms. These hydrogen atoms can be potentially dangerous to aquatic life by destroying shells and passing through fish gills.

    But what can be done? Doesn't mother nature have its own means to suppress the growing acidity in the soil and water. The answer to that question is yes and no. Certain mechanisms (ways to prevent those hydrogen atoms from being single) that neutralize the hydrogen atoms include ion exchanges with aluminum hydroxide and calcium carbonate.
       Another way are ion exchanges-(trading one hydrogen for another atom with the same charge), with giant cage like structures that have an overall negative charge. These cages have trapped within them different positively charged atoms such as sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium. Such exchanges release these potentially harmful ions into water which may end up in rivers and streams.The picture below shows what these "cages" look life.

     To gauge exactly how the acidity has effected the amounts of these metals in San Diego, we collected soil samples from multiple sites and ran them through an amazing contraption known as the atomic absorbance spectrometer. Essentially, metals burn at different pretty colors. If the solution burns a certain pretty color, then we know that it contains that certain metal. This was done for all samples collected.

      Ultimately, we found there were lower concentrations of ions such as Zinc, Lead, Ca and Cadmium that could not as easily remain in the cage as hydrogen could and were thus displaced. However, other stronger metal ions that were too tough to be pushed out such as Magnesium, and potassium remained. This is because their charges were comparable or stronger then that of hydrogen and were thus not displaced by ion exchange. In layman's terms, the bigger, the weaker- the weaker get removed. 

     This lab should convey the importance of reducing the amount of pollution in the atmosphere! What we do, both scientist and non scientist alike matters! Do not let it get to the point of no return!