Blackout is beautiful

Natural History, Nov, 2004 by Stephan Reebs

Remember the blackout of August 2003. which shut down power plants across much of the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada? For one group of chemists and meteorologists, that was a matchless opportunity to directly measure, not merely estimate, the air pollution caused by the plants" burning of fossil fuels.

Lackson T. Marufu and his colleagues at the University of Maryland in College Park compared air samples taken over central Pennsylvania a mere twenty-four hours into the blackout, with samples taken earlier that day over unaffected Maryland, as wall as samples collected in 2002 over the same spot in Pennsylvania under similar weather conditions, The investigators report that during the blackout, levels of airborne sulfur dioxide--a factor ill respiratory illness, acid rain, and damage to architectural materials--dropped by more than 90 percent, and low-altitude ozone by about 50 percent. Haze and smog decreased drastically as well, extending visibility by more than twenty-five miles. Road traffic stayed about the same, as did the amounts of its typical pollutants. Apparently, fossil-fuel-burning power plants generate more pollution, relative to vehicles, than had been estimated. ("The 2003 North American electrical blackout: An accidental experiment in atmospheric chemistry." Geophysical Research Letters 31:113106, July 15, 2004)