by Matthew Tyler Funk

Created on: November 25, 2007

Airports produce tremendous amounts of pollution - the vast majority of it air pollution, but that doesn't mean that their contribution to the pollution of ground water or their production of solid waste is insignificant by any stretch of the imagination.

Airport runways are constantly packed with huge passenger jets which are continuosly burning fuel while waiting to take off; except during the time when they are loading passengers. All that idling of those huge engines produces plenty of air pollution on it's own - especially with dozens of planes idling at once.

When the plane takes off, it must dump a huge amount of fuel into its enormous jet engines in order to lift itself off the ground. Of course, in order to remain in the air an airplane must continually burn huge amounts of fuel, which contributes greatly to carbon dioxide pollution wherever that plane goes. Since huge passenger jets could not fly without the existence of airports, I include the pollution the planes produce while in the air as airport pollution.

As air travel has become a more and more prevalent form of transportation in our society, the pollution such travel produces is becoming more and more of an issue. Researchers have recently found that there are components of jet fuel in over 98 percent of nursing mothers' breastmilk! That is truly an astounding and disturbing figure, especially when one takes into account the nutritional value of jet fuel.

Planes also emit what are called "con trails;" those white cloud-looking streaks that you see behind the planes in the sky. This contributes to a recently reported phenomenon known as "global dimming." Apparently the earth has more clouds, spread over a further distance than it has had in the past. People who measure how much water evaporates from a pan of water (called an evaporation pan) each day have found that the amount of water evaporating on average each day is actually decreasing - while global warming is on the rise! This is attributed to a lack of sunlight, in large part because of contrails; but of course other emission of visible pollutants by factories and smog from heavy traffic in the cities contributes as well.

Of course, airports pollute the ground water of the surrounding land as well, with all those fuel burning airplanes, not to mention their entourages of service vehicles. The tarmac on the airport produces the same problems as any well-travelled blacktop - a toxic brew of synthetic chemicals is washed off of the blacktop

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