Examining the Production of Sulphur Dioxide and Ozone Produced by Power Plants Across the United States.

Literature review

It has been documented that the gaseous pollutants Nitrogen Dioxide, Sulphur Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide and Ozone produced by power plants have been shown to increase the rates of asthma diagnosis and other respiratory illnesses (Amster et al ., 2014). What is more alarming is that power plants create around 70 % of all the gaseous pollutants within the United States of America (USA) (Hao et al ., 2007). To further elaborate, exposure to Nitrogen Dioxide, Sulphur Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide, and Ozone is known to cause infections in human’s respiratory systems and mortality (Chen., et al 2007).

Nitrogen Dioxide is known to follow seasonal patterns. The chemical gets more potent in colder temperature when compared to warmer seasons. During December, January and February an average of 26.9 mg/m3. Nitrogen Dioxide gas can be seen in the air. During the summer months 13.1 mg/m3 (Collart et al ., 2018). In the literature, little work has been conducted that studies the effects of Ozone on the pulmonary system (U.S. Department of Health). However, we do know that prolong exposure to this chemical has negative effects on one’s health.

Unlike Nitrogen Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide is a toxic gas that cannot be detected with the five senses. When produced, it typically causes headaches, vomiting, and dizziness. However, prolonged exposure will cause death (Centers for Disease Control). With all of these facts in mind, this study will exam the trends of these deadly gases produced by power plants. It is a well-known fact that when Sulphur Dioxide combines with water and air, it creates acid rain. Along with causing breathing problems, Sulphur Dioxide can cause coughing mucus secretion as well as chronic bronchitis. Most Sulphur Dioxide is produced when power plants burn fossil fuels. However, small amounts of the chemical are produced by volcanoes and locomotives (EPA). Unlike other gaseous pollutants, Sulphur Dioxide can interact with other chemicals in the air and form small particles. These particles are then collected and create a haze. It must not go unmentioned that Sulphur Dioxide is considered to be the deadliest of the pollutants produced by power plants. Also, in a paper by Loeffler & Hudson, Sulphur Dioxide and Ozone is deadly to the earth’s ecosystem since it melts the ice caps in the north a lot more quicker. With this in mind, this project will study tends in the production of Sulphur Dioxide and Ozone. The dependent variable is Ozone Sulphur Dioxide and Ozone is the independent variable since Sulphur Dioxid leads to the production of Sulphur Dioxide.

About the data

Interestingly, few analyses by the public have been conducted to study the trends of the production of gaseous pollutants. With this notion in mind, this study will use the pollution dataset from Kaggle to analyze trends in the production of Sulphur Dioxide,and Ozone gases to see how much of these chemicals are being produced by power plants within the USA.

The Pollution dataset was web scraped from the United States Environmental Protection Agency website, and it contains information about the amount of Nitrogen Dioxide, Sulphur Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide and Ozone produced by power plants in each state from 2000 – 2016. This dataset also has 29 columns and thousands of rows. In all, this dataset has over 1.7 million observations. Lastly, all measurments in this dataset were recored in parts per billion (ppb) units .

The dataset can be downloaded from this link https://www.kaggle.com/sogun3/uspollution .

Results

Complete Pooling and Interpretation

## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = pollution_us_2000_2016$`O3 Mean` ~ pollution_us_2000_2016$`SO2 Mean`)
## 
## Residuals:
##       Min        1Q    Median        3Q       Max 
## -0.026975 -0.008269 -0.000344  0.007675  0.152733 
## 
## Coefficients:
##                                     Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept)                        2.698e-02  1.033e-05  2611.8   <2e-16
## pollution_us_2000_2016$`SO2 Mean` -4.547e-04  3.097e-06  -146.8   <2e-16
##                                      
## (Intercept)                       ***
## pollution_us_2000_2016$`SO2 Mean` ***
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## Residual standard error: 0.0113 on 1746659 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared:  0.01219,    Adjusted R-squared:  0.01219 
## F-statistic: 2.155e+04 on 1 and 1746659 DF,  p-value: < 2.2e-16

This model generated exciting findings. For instance, we notice that the amount of Ozone and Sulfur Dioxide produced are statically significant to each other. If one chemical is created, the odds of the other chemical being produce are very high. To get a better understanding of the relationship, let’s use other pooling methods.

No Pooling model

Intercpet and Interpretation

Parts per Billion is a weight to weight ratio. It represents a ratio for any given substance in 1000 billion units of a solution. In this table, we can see the intercept of all the regressions the model ran that investigates the interaction between Sulphur Dioxide and Ozone produced by power plants across the United States. Based on the chart, it would seem that the majority of power plants in the USA produced between 0.020 PPB and 0.040 PPB units daily. Also, based on the table, it would seem that five power plants create about 0.030 PPB units of waste every day. This table also suggests that many power plants tend to produce a lot of waste and are not ecologically conscious of their actions.

Slope and Interpretation

The above graph was generated to display the slope of all the regression models this analysis ran to investigate the number of toxins produced by powerplants. In this table, we do not see many variations. Towards the far right-hand side, the majority of the powerplants in the USA produce around the same amount of chemicals. This Graphs also supports the notion that many power plants tend to produce a lot of waste and are not ecologically conscious of their actions since little variation is seen.

Partial Pooling and Interpretation

## Linear mixed-effects model fit by maximum likelihood
##  Data: pollution_data4 
##         AIC       BIC  logLik
##   -10777366 -10777316 5388687
## 
## Random effects:
##  Formula: ~1 | State
##         (Intercept)   Residual
## StdDev: 0.004160983 0.01106268
## 
## Fixed effects: O3mean ~ SO2mean 
##                    Value    Std.Error      DF    t-value p-value
## (Intercept)  0.027232834 0.0006072521 1746613   44.84601       0
## SO2mean     -0.000436191 0.0000034055 1746613 -128.08584       0
##  Correlation: 
##         (Intr)
## SO2mean -0.01 
## 
## Standardized Within-Group Residuals:
##         Min          Q1         Med          Q3         Max 
## -3.07771100 -0.72418686 -0.02851128  0.67544753 12.84156434 
## 
## Number of Observations: 1746661
## Number of Groups: 47

If one was to look at the results generated by the model, we will see that the partial pooling model supports the other models in that power plants do not have a lot of variation in the number of chemicals they produce. The standard deviation produced by this model was 0.004160983 units. When looking at the model, the intercept is 0.027232834 units. Fascinating, this model reveals something that the other models did not display. For every unit of Ozone power plants produce, they also create -0.000436191 units of Sulpher Dioxide. This is a negative relationship. This relationship suggests that power plants create more Ozone then they do Sulpher Dioxide.

Conclusion

This analysis came across some interesting findings that must be mentioned again. For instance, across the United States of America, power plants typically produce between 0.020 PPB and 0.040 PPB of chemical waste each day. To put this into perceptive for every billion gallons of water, one power plant produces 20,000,000 - 40,000,000 million gallons of harsh chemicals. These chemicals then enter the earth atmosphere via the water cycle. Afterward, they begin to cause health issues and break down the ozone layer. We also learned that power plants produce around the same range of chemicals since they do not have a lot of variation. In order to keep a clean and healthy world, we need to be mindful in how much we are damaging the earth and the health across all species of life. Hopefully, this analysis will help spread awareness of our actions.

Work Cited

  1. Amster, E. D., Haim, M., Dubnov, J., & Broday, D. M. (2014). Contribution of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide exposure from power plant emissions on respiratory symptom and disease prevalence. Environmental Pollution, 20-28.

  2. Carbon Monoxide Poisoning (2016, October 26). In U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. Retrieved from https://ephtracking.cdc.gov/showCoRisk.action

  3. Chen, T.M., Gokhale, J., Shofer, S., Kuschner, W.G., 2007. Outdoor air pollution: nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and carbon monoxide health effects. Am. J. Med. Sci. 333, 249 - 256.

  4. Collart, P., Dubourg, D., Levêque, A., Bustos-Sierra, N., & Coppieters, Y. (2018). Data on short-term effect of nitrogen dioxide on cardiovascular health in Wallonia,Belgium. Data inBrief, 172-179.

  5. Hao, J., Wang, L., Shen, M., Li, L., Hu, J., 2007. Air quality impacts of power plant emissions in Beijing. Environ. Pollut. 147, 401-408.

  6. Loeffler, M., & Hudson, R. (2016, December 5). WHAT IS EATING OZONE? THERMAL REACTIONS BETWEEN SO2 AND O3: IMPLICATIONS FOR ICY ENVIRONMENTS. The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

  7. Sulfur Dioxide Basics (2019, April 2). In Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) Pollution. Retrieved from https://www.epa.gov/so2-pollution/sulfur-dioxide-basics