What is the difference between primary and secondary air pollutants?

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Amrita Mehta asked 6 years ago

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What is the difference between primary and secondary air pollutants?

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What is the difference between primary and secondary air pollutants?

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All pollutants enter in the air either directly or indirectly. In order to fight these air pollutants, it is important to be able to classify and identify the different types of air pollutants. Ideally, air pollutants are divided into primary and secondary air pollutants.

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Team GreenSutra

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GreenSutra

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Question Tags: actonclimate, airpollution, climatechange, expertscorner, globalwarming, greensutra, pollution, primarypollutants, secondarypollutants

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Team GreenSutra® Staff answered 6 years ago

There are various types of pollutants that keep entering the atmosphere and polluting it. At some places, concentration of certain pollutants is greater compared to the others.

A pollutant can be defined as a substance or energy introduced into the environment or ecosystem that has undesired or adverse affects to the usefulness of a resource. Some substances may not be pollutants at the start but when they come in contact with other substances, they could become one.

Based on this, air pollutants can be classified as primary and secondary pollutants.

Primary pollutants are those pollutants that get added directly to the air while secondary pollutants are formed as result of chemical and physical reactions between primary pollutants and other atmospheric components.