General Question

LanceVance's avatar

Does any form of plastic react with anorganic acids in rain?

Asked by LanceVance (645points) May 11th, 2008

What products are produced by the reaction and are those products harmful to the environment?

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6 Answers

shilolo's avatar

Do you mean inorganic acids, or an organic acid?

FiRE_MaN's avatar

Natural acid in rain probably would not do anything, the sunlight it would be getting would be more harmful then the natural acid in rain.. But if it is pollution acid, depending on the type of pollutant, can be much more harmful. If it is not really polluted near you I would care more about protecting it from the sun then the rain.

LanceVance's avatar

I mean inorganic acids, sorry for the mistake.

And by plastic I mean the one that’s been dumped on meadows and fields.

FiRE_MaN's avatar

Why would plasics be dumped on fields? After a while it will probably disolve the plastic… I do not think it would produce anything toxic… other then the fact that there is disolved plasitc on the ground.

nikipedia's avatar

The term “plastic” encompasses a lot of different kinds of materials. If you give me the chemical composition of a specific plastic and the acid in question I can guess at the reaction for you, but even then I would have a hard time guessing what impact it would have on the environment.

8lightminutesaway's avatar

“plastic” is not specific enough to say for sure, but I would say probably not. First off, the acid in the rain is very low concentration unless you have an acid rain problem in your area. Second, most of the chemical structures I can find for plastics would not react with just acid, but there are some out there that probably would. Like I said, plastics covers a whole range of materials. What plastics being dumped in meadows in fields? If you mean some sort of landfill, then theres bound to be every kind of plastic in there, but generally plastic is unreactive and thats part of why its so widely used.

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