[Judy Pino] Hello, and welcome to Green Scene,
EPA's series of environmental podcasts that you can
take with you.
I'm Judy Pino.
Acid rains is one of the most requested topics here at EPA
from school systems and teachers, and today,
we are coming to you from the Koshland Science Museum in
Washington D.C., one of the nation's premiere environmental
education interactive exhibition spaces.
To introduce to you the acid rain teacher's guide as part
of the EPA's public outreach on acid rain and to tell
us more about this very important project is
Brian McLean, of the EPA's Office of Atmospheric
programs, and students, who are here today joining us from
Kipp/Key Academy in southeast Washington, grades 6-8.
Welcome everybody.
All right Brian, well, you've been with the EPA for 20 years
and have been instrumental in developing EPA's programs
to reduce acid rain.
Can you tell us, what is acid rain and what EPA
is doing about it?
[Brian McLean] Okay, well, acid rain is a fascinating problem,
because it's so complicated that people didn't understand
it at first.
It actually forms in the atmosphere from pollutants
that come from power plants mostly, and when it mixes
with moisture and other chemicals in the air,
it transforms into acidic compounds, wet or dry
compounds, that then later fall to the earth, sometimes several
hundred miles away.
So when we first discovered these problems, they were
in the lakes in the Adirondacks in New York, and there were no
pollution sources around these lakes.
People couldn't understand why the lakes were becoming acidic
and the fish were dying.
And it took people a long time to understand that
this pollution was actually moving hundreds of miles
from where the power plants were to where the lakes were and
falling on the trees and falling on the ground
and into the lakes.
So it took quite a bit of scientific investigation
before people connected the cause with the transformation,
the deposition of the chemicals onto the ground.
[Judy Pino] So you, of all people, in 20 years have been able to see
a difference?
[Brian Mclean] Yes, in fact, it took almost 20 years for people to really
understand this problem before we began to solve it.
And that started -- the solutions we
imposed were in the 1990s.
We passed the Clean Air Act, and then in 1995, we began to reduce
emissions from power plants all across the United States.
And since 1995, we've reduced them now by over 40 percent,
and we have noticed changes.
Deposition has changed, it's less acidic.
The lakes are becoming less acidic.
So this turned out to be scientific investigation
that turned into, really, almost a grand experiment
in real time by reducing the emissions and then measuring
the effect of those reductions on the planet.
[Judy Pino] As we mentioned, acid rain is one of the topmost topics that
people are requesting, and for that reason, we created --
EPA has created -- a teacher's guide.
Tell us a little bit about that.
[Brian McLean] Well, actually, even before we started solving the problem,
as we began to understand it and people were so interested in it,
we developed a teachers' guide, back in the early 1990s.
And because we were getting so many requests -- people wanted
to understand what was causing this and then what can we
do about it.
And so back then, we were simply describing what we understood
about the problem, and we decided to put in some
experiments so that students in school could actually test and
understand what was happening.
And then, in the last several years, we've added not only
the information about it, but then we started adding
information about what we're doing about it and how we're
reducing emissions to deal with the problem.
[Judy Pino] And this is not the first time that EPA has created
a teachers' guide on acid rain.
[Brian McLean] That's correct, and what we're sort of announcing
now is that we have updated this.
We have new experiments in there for people to use.
We've tested those, and we've added a lot of new information.
[Judy Pino] And of course, we can't visit one of the premiere
environmental education interactive exhibition
spaces without doing a little science.
And Flora Lernman [phonetic sp] is
a teacher at Kipp/Key Academy.
Thanks for being with us Flora.
[Flora Lernman] Hi, nice to be here.
[Judy Pino] Hi, and you have some of your students here.
They are doing some science experiments in the guidebook --
from the guidebook.
[Flora Lernman] Yes, we're actually doing experiment number two from
the guidebook, and right now these science scholars are
looking at different levels of acidity.
They're measuring the pH levels of fruits, juices,
and other household items.
As you can see, these science scholars have started already,
and they're now in the process of measuring and recording
their results.
[Judy Pino] Okay guys, go ahead.
In the meantime, we'll continue talking.
Brian, how important is it that the experiments be easy for the
teachers and the students, so they really understand
what acid rain is all about and how to prevent it?
[Brian McLean] Well, the basic concepts in the experiments they're doing are
very similar to what we do in the real world.
We use more sophisticated instruments, and we have
monitors all around the country checking out what's going on,
but what they're looking at is how you can measure the acidity
of various common things that we have around the house,
from fruits and vegetables to other liquids.
We do the same thing, we're measuring air,
we're measuring the soil, we're measuring the water in lakes,
and we're doing the same kind of think, except with much
more expensive instruments --
[Judy Pino] Sure.
[Brian McLean] -- and much more widespread.
But it's the same kind of method that we use,
and by understanding it, they can appreciate what actually
goes into evaluating and understanding a problem
and solving a problem.
[Judy Pino] Now, let's talk to some of these science scholars.
I'm interested in knowing what you think about acid rain and
how important is it that you prevent acid rain?
[Male Student] Well, it's very important that you prevent it, because it
destroys our community and our trees, and so it could affect
us in some way.
If you're like a -- like, if you love nature,
then this is a big problem for you, and even for people who
don't really love nature, so and it really destroys our community
and our houses --
[Judy Pino] What about the science experiments?
Do you think these are important so you guys can understand
a little more about acid rain?
Yes?
And what are you doing to prevent acid rain?
[Male Student] To prevent acid rain, I'm trying not to use as much
electricity as I used to.
[Judy Pino] That's great advice, and we could all learn from that,
right Brian?
[Brian McLean] Yes.
[Judy Pino] And Brian, I understand that one of the most popular
aspects of this guide is the nine science experiments,
such as the one that the kids are doing today.
Tell us about these experiments and the reason for including
them in the guide.
[Brian McLean] Well, we've found that when people want to understand
a problem, the best thing to do is actually to go through
the process of experimenting and testing just the way we would
do and really understand that there are liquids and chemicals
and we can measure them.
And so we have developed and, in the last few years, revised
these experiments to make them very to the point and explicit
so that people can understand, students can understand,
exactly what we do when we're measuring.
[Judy Pino] Okay guys, so the kids have been working on their experiments.
What are the results, teacher?
[Flora Lernman] Well, as you can see, the soap is a base, and the fruit and
the juices and the soda are acids, and water is close
to neutral.
[Judy Pino] Is that a good thing?
[Flora Lernman] Mm-hmm, yeah, we want to keep our water neutral so that it's
not acidic, so that when it comes down it's not acid rain.
[Judy Pino] Okay, well, thank you very much.
[Male Student] You're welcome.
[Judy Pino] And thank you Brian McLean, of EPA's Office of Atmospheric
Programs; Ms. Flora Lernman, teacher at Kipp/Key Academy
in Southeast; and all of our students in the studio today;
and of course, Koshland Science Museum in downtown Washington
D.C., one of the nation's premiere environmental
education interactive spaces for helping us out with this very
important Green Scene.
For more information on what EPA is doing to reduce acid rain,
please visit www.epa.gov/acidrain.
To find out more about the Koshland Science Museum,
go to the address on screen.
The guide "Learning About Acid Rain: A Teacher's Guide for
Grades 6-8" we should say is also available online for
download at www.epa.gov/acidrain.
And of course, printed copies are available for free
through the acid rain hotline on the screen now.
Thank you very much for being with us.
Thanks Brian. 00:08:50.020,00:00:00.000 .