Aerosols Blog

While aerosols are something that we experience everyday—we don’t always think about it like we should. Aerosols are an important thing to study. Our everyday air has thousands of particles suspended in it. An aerosol can be defined as a system of solid or liquid particles suspended in air or other gaseous environment. Some examples of aerosols are: sand, smog, cigarette fumes, or any types of dust clouds. Many of these are man-made, though typically they are naturally present. Burning fossil fuels in vehicles, power plants, and various industrial processes also emit a significant amount of particles in the atmosphere, and these are activities that are all controlled by man. Human activities actually account for about 10 percent of the total mass of aerosols in the atmosphere.  The increase of these activities have increased concentrations of atmospheric aerosols, which have led to a cooling of climate. This cooling “acts to counterbalance some of the warming due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases,” which, are also caused by human activities. Despite popular belief, numerous studies have showed that it is a myth that aerosols that come from spray canisters, used for products such as deodorant, damage the ozone layer. It is said that in the past gases used as propellants in spray cans were damaging to the ozone layer, but it is not actually the aerosol particles themselves. Under the “Montreal Protocol”, these propellants have been replaced by non-ozone depleting alternatives. But, all in all, these gas replacements are greenhouse gases and add a small component to the global warming problem.