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Acid rain is caused when air pollutants combine with water and oxygen to form acidic compounds. When these compounds fall back to earth, they destroy fauna and marine life, corrode building materials, and generally wreak havoc on the environment. The bulk of acid rain in the United States is the result of burning fossil fuels for electricity. It's important to remember that the nice "clean" electricity coming out of our wall sockets is often manufactured inside coal-burning power plants. Acid rain is also a problem in Europe, Scandinavia, and emerging industrial nations like China and India. Acid rain became a hot political
issue in the '80s, largely as a result of Canada's protests to the United States, and helped to inspire the Helsinki Protocol (1985) and the revised U.S. Clean Air Act (1990). While acid rain may have faded as a media grabber, the problem persists. The EPA's Acid Rain Program hopes to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, the two primary pollutants in acid rain, to half of 1980 levels by 2010.
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