Conclusions

In this section we will discuss each section of the survey and give our conclusions. An important fact that must be remembered when interpretting the results is that people who answered the survey all use the Internet. This will suggest that they all are reasonably well educated, and probably that they are not poor.

Countries:

We were very surprised by the number of replies that we received to our survey, especially the huge number that we got from the USA. We were also surprised to receive replies from some lesser known countries like Malaysia and Estonia. This survey has definitely shown the the USA has the most Internet users and that other countries are still far behind.

Main Energy Sources:

Most of the books that we used when researching our project listed oil as the most used source of energy at present. For this reason we were surprised that our results gave gas and coal as the most used sources of energy. This might be due to the fact that we did not receive replies from the North Africa, the Middle East and most of Asia, where oil is probably used to a much greater extent.

Air Pollution from the Main Energy Source:

In this section we received many varrying answers. We were pleased to see that only 16% of our repliers did not know about air pollution from their main energy source. The fact that more that a quarter of the repliers said that their main energy source did not produce air pollution, is a bit worring. To the best of our knowledge most sources of energy cause air pollution (except solar and geothermal power). All fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) release carbon oxides, nitrogen oxides and sulphur oxides, as well as other pollutants. Nuclear power pollutes that air with radioactive particles, as well as heat. Hydro& copy;electric and wind energy pollute the air because their lubricants (e.g. the oil in their machinery) evaporates, thereby polluting the air.

Alternative Energy Sources:

This section did not produce any surprising results, except the large number of users who said their alternative energy source was solar power. This might be due to the fact that solar energy is very clean, and therefore it is greatly publisized when it is used. We had expected to get a wide varity of answers to this section, because there are so many developing sources of energy, and for this reason the results had not been unexpected.

Air Pollution from Alternative Sources of Energy:

We did not receive a variety of answers for this section, and this is probvably because more than a third of the repliers did not have a alternative source. Another reason is that alternative energy sources are less known about, and therefore their pollution is less known about.

Respiratory Problems:

The results from this section are not really usable, because not enough information was availalbe about the type of respiratory problem or the extennt of the air pollution (visible and invisible). Some of the repliers who said that they had respiratory problems did say that their problems where caused or agravated by air pollution. For this reason we can say that air pollution does have a negative influence on a person's health, but to what extent we do not know.

Ratings on air:

These results were expected, and they show that the majority of people live, work and learn in places of clean air.

Thanks:

I would just like to take this opportunity to thank everybody who replied to our survey. I am very greatful for all the repliers' interest and help. I would also like to thank Mrs. McCullen and all the other people who helped to get this survey posted on MidLink.

Peter le Roux

Back to the Breath of Fresh Air Survey.

Kate Caldwell and Kari Zander
Ligon GT Middle School, 706 East Lenoir St.
Raleigh, North Carolina, 27615