ozone...good and bad

july 19 2007

First we had cholesterol...later we had good cholesterol and bad cholesterol.

Well, I was taught about ozone. It smelled good, but it was bad, they said then.
But now NASA tells us we have good and bad ozone.

Well, let's start with the bad ozone.

When there's ozone in the sky right above earth up to 10 miles (the troposphere) you have a real problem.
Ozone molecules consist of 3 oxygen atoms, where as the molecules of the air we breathe contain 2 oxygen atoms.

Pollution caused by, for example, cars consists of nitrogen oxide, which is a gas. Each nitrogen oxide molecule is made of one atom of nitrogen and two atoms of oxygen.

On a sunny day nitrogen dioxide sheds one of the oxide atoms, and they find their way to the 2 oxygen atoms of our air and binds to them, creating ozone.

Lack of healthy air, and/or an abundance of onzone cause eyes to get watery, but even worse, it influences breathing of people with lung diseases and with vulnerable lungs, like small children and the elderly.

There's far more happening to all human bodies, but we don't know the extend of the damage at the moment. We're not even able to measure all the chemical reactions that are caused by sunlight (photochemical smog).

At higher levels of the atmosphere, 10 - 30 miles above sea level (stratosphere) the energy of the sunlight splits up the air molecule in 2 atoms oxygen. Lik at lower levels the stray atom adheres to the normal oxygen molecule, thus creating ozone.
Ozone at those levels protects us from the sunlight. That means we are protected from for instance skin cancer. It also prevents plants from dying from the ultraviolete radiation.

So whereas good and bad cholesterol are different, ozone is the same everywhere, but depending upon the place it's good or bad.

We can prevent the formation of bad ozone by lowering the output from polluting processes.
Industry and cars are the main polluters, so we have to be more careful with what we want and how we travel.