What is Carbon monoxide? Carbon monoxide (CO) is a colorless, odorless, poisonous gas emitted directly from vehicle tailpipes. What are the effects of carbon monoxide Carbon Monoxide enters the blood streams through lungs and forms a compound that inhibits the blood capacity to carry oxygen to organs and tissues. People with heart diseases are specially sensitive to carbon monoxide poisoning and may experience chest pain if they breathe the gas while exercising. Infants ,the elderly and people with respiratory diseases are also particularly sensitive. Carbon monoxide can affect healthy individuals, manual dexterity, learning functions and the ability to perform complex tasks.

Do you feel that summers are getting hotter every year?

• Well it is not just your imagination; temperatures are rising every year at an alarming rate. And the main culprits are greenhouse gases.
• Greenhouse gases trap the sun's heat in the atmosphere instead of letting it escape again. This leads to a term we are all now most familiar with - climate change.
• Some naturally existing gases like water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane have greenhouse properties. These provide the earth with the warmth it needs.
• But since the industrial revolution the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has gone up by a whopping 30 per cent, trapping more heat than necessary.
• We release these gases every time we burn petrol by running a car, burn coal or even run the AC longer than needed.
• Greenhouse gases can be reduced by planting trees because trees absorb these gases and while you're at it, recycle paper and save existing trees as well.

Very Important Facts

• Avoiding just 10 miles of driving every week would eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year!
• Crawling traffic contributes eight times as much air pollution as traffic moving at regular highway speed.
• Emissions from an individual car or truck are generally low, but add up the emissions from millions of vehicles in use every day and you have serious air pollution.
• Driving your car probably causes more pollution than anything else you do today, and you have the power to fix that.
• One gallon of used motor oil can contaminate 1 million gallons of water.
• A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.
• Motor oil never wears out, it just gets dirty. Oil can be recycled, re-refined and used again, reducing our reliance on imported oil.
• A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.
• Air Pollution can kill by hindering the pacing of one's heart: Study

India global warming hot-spot: UN study

1. Study Projects 4 degrees rise in Temperature, erratic rain in India after 2050.
2. Pollution can make your kid Fat.
3. Cleaner air can help add 5 months to your life.
4. Eat Less meat to fight climate change
5. Every time we burn oil, coal and gas to generate electricity and power, we produce heat trapping gases that cause global warming.
6. For one the heat is building up! (The surface temperature is up by 0.3 degrees in the last 40 years).
7. The 10 hottest years recorded have been since 1990.
8. An increase in temperature will affect the quantity of crops available to eat
9. A warmer climate will also lead to freak weather conditions leading to droughts and floods
10. Sea levels will rise
11. Plants and animals will wilt and die.
12. India alone produces 4 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions and the rate of emission is growing by 2 to 3 per cent annually.
    

So what is it that we are doing wrong?

• For once we use too much electricity which means thermal power plants release a lot more greenhouse gases; we are clogging up the streets and the earth with emissions from our cars and buses and we are still using plastic bags!
  We have done our bit to heat up the world; now it's time to cool it down. You've heard this before, but now it's time to listen!
  
  Here are some of the things that you can do -
  
• Switch off the fan when you leave the room.
• Secondly, by opting for a 45-minute jog in the park as opposed to a treadmill you save 1 kg of greenhouse gases.
• Thirdly, try a car pool for your daily commute.
• And last, but not the least, shut down your gadgets - don't leave them on standby.

Tips on saving fuel.

• Vehicles that idle for three minutes with AC on burn fuel required for traveling 1km.Smaller cars burn Rs. 2 per minute, bigger vehicles Rs.3.
• Motorist stuck in Traffic signal for more than 20 seconds should switch off the engine. Apart from saving fuel, it would help reduce pollution.
• In case the waiting time is less than 20 Seconds, it is advisable to keep the engine on as it would increase the life of the battery, self starter and switch.
• 994cr is the annual fuel loss in Delhi due to idling vehicles.
• 250 rupees saved every month if a driver switches off ignition at signals of more than 14-sec waiting time.