CClean Air Kids LLet’s Clean the Air Together!

Activity Book

Compiled & Created by: East Tennessee Clean Fuels Coalition

TThe Facts about Air There are many different things that make up the air we breathe. It is 78%

nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and a 1% mix of many other gases. Every minute an adult breathes 16 times, while a baby breathes 20-30 times. While running or playing you breathe 50 times a minute. Humans need oxygen to breathe but it’s impossible to only breathe in oxygen. Instead we breathe a mixture of oxygen, other gases, water droplets, pollen, and pollution. Although water droplets are harmless, pollen can cause allergies, and pollution can impact your body in many different ways.

East Tennessee has a problem on its hands and that problem is air pollution. Many counties in East Tennessee are not meeting the nation’s air quality standards for human health. Particulate matter (PM) is one of the worst pollutants for humans and the environment. Fumes from diesel fuel used by buses and trucks are a source of particulate matter. PM is airborne solids and liquids less than 2.5 microns in diameter (for reference, a grain of salt is 100 microns in size). These tiny particles are easily inhaled into the lungs, where they can cause cancer, damage lung tissue, make your lungs grow slower, and worsen asthma.

Air pollution comes from many places, like factories, chimneys, volcanoes, and even animals. However, almost 40% of air pollution, including particulate matter and the gases that form ozone, comes from cars and trucks. This is more than twice the amount that comes from industries and more than the amount of pollution that is emitted by homes in the United States. By using alternative fuels like biodiesel, ethanol, electricity, natural gas, or propane, or cleaner transportation technologies like trains or more fuel efficient cars and trucks, in some cases we can reduce air pollution emissions by up to 75%. However, riding your bike or walking are the cleanest options that produces zero pollution.

Air pollution also has many effects on plants and animals. When ozone pollution is high, some plants aren’t able to properly make and store food. Other impacts include damaging leaves and decreasing forest growth. All of these negative effects on plants could also harm many animals that live in forests and eat vegetation.

Imagine a Tennessee wwhere the air is too dirty

to go outside!

The World Leader in VERY High Speed Trains Mass transit—like passenger rail —is more fuel efficient for moving people. Compared to average cars and trucks, inner-city rail and commuter rail are 20-25% more fuel efficient.

Trains rock!

HHow do We Clean the Air? Experts say that if everyone in the United States did something small to reduce

how much oil they use, our air would become a lot cleaner. There are many small things that everyone can do to improve air quality, such as riding your bike, taking the school bus, walking, carpooling, or taking public transportation, like trains or buses.

There are also many actions that you can encourage your parents to do while driving. These things include driving the speed limit, not driving aggressively, combining errands, and idling less by avoiding drive thrus. You can also help your parents make small changes to your car, like keeping it light by taking out items in your car that you don’t use often, keeping your tires properly inflated, and helping them take off bike or other racks when they are not in use. You can also ask your parents to use alternative fuels!

What are Alternative Fuels? Alternative fuels are transportation fuels other than gasoline and diesel that are cleaner and made in America!

Ethanol: A fuel for gasoline engines made by fermenting and distilling crops like corn, sugarcane, wood waste, and switchgrass that have been broken down into simple sugars. It can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% and produces more power than regular gasoline.

Biodiesel: A fuel for diesel engines made from natural oils like soybeans, sunflowers, animal fats, and algae. It cleans the vehicle’s fuel tank and engine, its biodegradable, non-toxic, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 75%.

Natural Gas: A fossil or renewable gas that is compressed into a liquid to be used in vehicles. It releases little to no PM and is cheaper than gasoline.

Propane: A fossil fuel gas that is compressed into a liquid to power vehicles. It is non-toxic and decreases air pollution by 20-25%.

Electric Vehicles: Vehicles powered by electricity. Even when using power generated by coal plants, a charge-up (instead of a fill-up) is only a couple of cents per gallon and emits 7 lbs of carbon dioxide compared to 22 lbs released for every gallon of gasoline used in a conventional vehicle. And that can be much cleaner if you use hydro, nuclear or renewable energy, like solar and wind!

According to the UT Biofuels Initiative Tennessee currently has the ability to produce 480 million gallons of ethanol a year. By making ethanol from corn and switchgrass, Tennessee has the potential to produce at least 1

billion gallons of ethanol each year, replacing 30% of its gasoline consumption.

Driving around in automobiles and trucks is one of the largest sources of air pollution.We need to encourage grown-ups to walk, ride bikes and buy more fuel-effi cient cars.

Rustle the Leaf™ • Clean, Green Power Coloring Page

WWhere does Gasoline come from? Gasoline and diesel is made from oil in a very long and expensive process that

uses a lot of energy. Oil makes up 40% of all of the energy used in the United States, and is 99% of the fuel used in cars and trucks.

Oil is a non-renewable resource, which means that it takes hundreds of thousands of years to make. This means that even in your great-grandchildren’s lifetimes, there will still not be any new oil to find and use. Some researchers say the world will start running low on oil in 2030. This means that in 20 years oil is going to become more rare and expensive and gasoline and diesel are going to be harder to find until it finally runs out.

What will you be doing in 20 years?

Now imagine that gasoline is $10 a gallon and in order to fill up your car, it costs over $150!!!

WWhere does Oil come from? Oil is a fossil fuel; natural gas and coal are fossil fuels too. 300-400 million years

ago plants and animals lived on the earth and after they died they were covered with rock and sand. They were buried deeper and deeper and over time were crushed and heated into liquid and gas.

Oil was found to have many purposes thousands of years ago; it is referred to as pitch in the bible when cementing walls in Babylon. In the United States, Native Americans used the black liquid for medicine. Although early settlers in Pennsylvania discovered it could be used in lamps, its true potential wasn’t realized until the 1850’s when Edwin Drake became the first person to drill for oil. In the late 1800s and the beginning of the1900s, people all around the world increased their oil use drastically, by using it in cars and factories.

Today, we use oil in a variety of ways, from fueling cars, to fixing squeaky doors or making plastic. Look around your environment at all of the plastic! All these items were made from oil!

How is Gas Made? It takes about 3-10 years from the time oil is discovered to when it is delivered

to gas stations for your parents to buy. The first step is to find it. Scientists test rocks and use advanced technology to find ‘holes’ underground that may have oil in them. Once they find oil, drilling begins and a pipe is fitted into the hole. Once this is done, oil will flow up the pipe to the surface. Next the oil is sent to a refinery, or oil factory, via pipeline, ship, or barge.

At the refinery, different parts of the oil are used and made into different products. One barrel of oil equals 42 gallons and makes a little more than 44 gallons of oil products, including about19 gallons of gasoline. Other things made from oil include: ink, crayons, soap, DVDs, and tires. There are three steps that refineries use to make gasoline: separation, conversion, and treatment. The oil is separated into different chemicals, liquids, and gases by their weight. The lighter liquid is made into gasoline, while the heavier, thicker liquid is made into diesel. Finishing touches are added to the gasoline during the treatment stage.

Lastly, the gasoline is transported all across the country in pipelines until it isfinally put in underground tanks at gas stations where your parents can buy it.

Source: EIA Energy Kids

OOil to Air Pollution: The Pathway Number the pictures to show the correct pathway from (1) how oil is created

to (12) how it eventually impacts humans and the environment.

Dinosaurs roamed the earth millions of years ago.

____

Oil pumps are used to pull out oil from deep down beneath the earth.

____

Huge ships, called oil tankers, move oil from one part of the world to another. However, sometimes the tanker

has a leak or hits something and oil leaks into the oceans and kills fish and plants.

____

After dinosaurs became extinct, sand, dirt, and rocks buried the bones along with plants.

____

Oil refineries turn oil into gasoline.

____

Gasoline trucks take gas from the oil refineries and bring it to gas stations, where it is stored

in tanks below the gas pumps.

____

People fill up their gas tanks in their cars at gas stations.

____

Over time sand and rocks crushed dinosaur bones and plants into oil.

____

Air pollution can kill plants and animals, destroy buildings, and can make people

sick when they breathe it in.

____

Cars release pollution, like smoke and poisonous gas, that comes out of the tailpipe and goes into

the air.

____

Today, a special truck is used to find oil that is stored deep beneath the earth.

____

People use cars to drive everywhere. Some people use cars to drive to work and school, while others use them to drive to other states to go on

vacation.

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Children are the most impacted by air pollution because their bodies are still developing and they are more active than the average adult. 80% of the tiny air sacs in a child’s lungs are still developing after they are born, and are thus more affected by air pollution. The effects of breathing particulate matter, ozone, and other pollutants when young can still affect you after you become an adult due to decreased lung function and lung underdevelopment.

Asthma is also a big problem in East Tennessee because air pollution can cause asthma attacks. Out of the more than 400,000 people living in Knox County, over 8,000 of them are kids that have asthma.

Although there are many health

effects of breathing in air pollution, there’s no need to be scared or not go outside to play. But it is important to check the news and weather to find the air quality level before spending a whole day outside, especially during hot, summer days when ozone is formed. You can ask your parents to find it on the internet (www.airnow.gov) or you can watch the weather on your local news station.

DDiscoverr Jonathan’s Secret MMessage

The Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment (ISSE) is part of the University of Tennessee (UT) and was created to promote the development of policies, technologies, and educational

programs, engage the university''s research faculty and staff, and allow the university to grow in response to environmental issues facing the state, the nation, and the globe.

The ISSE employs many different types of people with all different kinds of educational backgrounds, such as economists, biologists, political scientists, planners, chemists, engineers,

accountants, historians, and many more. There are many different projects that people of the ISSE work on.

One such project was headed by Sheila Webster, Director of the Technology and Research Development Program and Maggie Stevens , an ISSE Researcher. Together they worked with

Alcoa High School students to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle. Students were encouraged to use reusable canvas bags when grocery shopping and were given a flash drive to load papers on

instead of printing.

Catherine Wilt, Director of policy for ISSE’s Center for Clean Products worked on a project that received national attention. Mrs. Wilt led a team of UT students to a Sustainable Design

competition in Washington D.C., where the students took home the grand prize and received $75,000 to build a sustainable building in Norris, TN.

Jonathan Overly, Director of the East Tennessee Clean Fuels Coalition is spearheading several projects right now to bring cleaner fuels use to East Tennessee and beyond. They include adding

electrical towers for trucks at a Crossville truck stop so that the trucks can stop idling and reduce their emissions, and building a biofuels corridor on I-75 all the way from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan

to Miami, Florida. The I-75 project will enable Americans to travel all along I-75 and be able to refuel with American-made E85 ethanol or B20 biodiesel along the way.

WWord Clean Air Search! S Z C O J V J E S S U E N T D C K LI O A L Z S T S L A L W L Q I A N EA L Y A I H R L J E G A E B R R Z SI E Q B A M I N C S H L Z R B P N ER Z C N E P A T S M R K A F Y O E IP P O O S A R T U O C E I R H O K DO L R L R I N Q E X I I Q D U L X OL Q I P C N U S R C L C U G E T V IL O Z I U S S A R G H C T I W S A BU P T Q R E S A G U Q A C L E A N NT Y T W A X O N I H G E N A P O R PI E H G R E E N H O U S E G A S E SO X L B W B J B N A D A V O E Z J DN A W S P J U N Y K M Y M L Q Z I YT E N N E S S E E F O T G H I T X EZ V Z E R A A N I G X I W X T O L PT Q J T V X E T P K N H L Z S S B IT J T U F N R Y D Y G Y C M J O A U

AIR POLLUTION ALGAE ASTHMA BIODIESEL BUS CARPOOL CLEAN CLIMATE CHANGE CORN ELECTRICITY ETHANOL

GAS GREENHOUSE GASES HYBRID NATURAL GAS OIL OIL SPILLS PROPANE SOYBEANS SWITCHGRASS TENNESSEE WALK

Clean Cars Criss-Cross

AAcross 3. Using clean fuels can decrease the number of children who have this breathing problem 5. The National treasure where we can go hiking (2 words) 7. Fuel made by animal fats and soybeans 8. Instead of filling up with gasoline, your parents can use an electric car and use this source 9. Instead of your parents driving you to school, you can take this (2 words) 10. What humans need in order to breathe Down 1. Another word for vehicle 2. A fuel made from corn or switchgrass 4. Pollution that is in the air (2 words) 6. What gasoline and diesel is made from

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For More Information: www.epa.gov www.doe.gov www.eere.energy.gov www.fueleconomy.gov www.etcleanfuels.orgwww.eia.doe.gov/kids/

Picture Sources: Word Press Modern X Classic Flickr Voyageur Oil and Gas Corp The Guardian UK Canada Maps Europa Valve The Daily Mail UK University of Arizona RV Now Blog AMS Oil

Comics Sources: Chris Madden Cartoons Photo Bucket

Great Smoky Mountain National Parks

Information Sources: Answers.com CleantheAirTN.org DOE.gov EPA - www.epa.gov EPA Environmental Kids Club - www.epa.gov/kids Fueleconomy.gov NASA.gov OPEC.org MuseumoftheEarth.org Stateoftheair.org US. Energy Information Administration Energy Kids tonto.eia.doe.gov/kids/

Special Thanks To: