Air pollution is a result of human activity. Carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides produced by industry and motor vehicles are common air pollutants. Sunlight converts nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons to ozone or smog. The world leaders in air pollution emissions are the USA, Russia, China, and Japan, however Canada is the number two country on a per capita basis.

We know pretty much well that no other element of the natural world is more essential to life than air, and no environmental task more critical than keeping it clean. Because electric power plants and motor vehicles are by far the biggest sources of air pollution and effects of air pollution are from lung damage to acid rain to global warming, air pollution control is task number one for environmentalists.

One of the worst sources of air pollution is electric power plants. They are the single largest industrial source of some of the worst air pollutants, including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide and mercury. In 1998, power plants were responsible for 67 percent of the annual total sulfur dioxide, more than one-quarter of the nitrogen oxides, 33 percent of the mercury and 40 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions in the United States.

The government of the USA, environmental organizations and different institutes in the country pay much attention to air pollution control. For example, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) focuses much of their attention to the industries that are the main air pollutants.  They also work to strengthen and enforce the Clean Air Act, which they helped write, and study and publicize the health threats caused by air pollution.

The Bush administration developed a plan called the Clear Skies initiative and submitted it to Congress in February 2003 as a proposal to amend the Clean Air Act. The Clear Skies legislation sets new targets for emissions of sulfur dioxide, mercury, and nitrogen oxides from U.S. power plants.

The questions of air pollution control and reduction in vehicle air pollution are always discussed together as they are interconnected. When there was only one car on the planet, the amount of air pollution it produced was irrelevant to the cleanliness of the total volume of air. At some point, as more and more cars were added, the cumulative amount of air pollution they produced got to be enough that even when diluted in the larger volume of air in a given region, the air-pollution levels started being high enough to cause health problems. We keep adding more and more cars-with lower-mileage, higher-polluting vehicles comprising a larger portion of them-and as we continue driving more miles per person-advances in air pollution control technology have started losing some of their effectiveness in terms of how clean the air is overall.

A number of companies work on air pollution control technologies taking into account the changes that take place in the modern world. For example, Anguil provides a broad line of technologically advanced, yet user-friendly air pollution control products. Each product line respresents value-engineered systems with emphasis on cost minimization. Anguil strives to provide innovative pollution control technology including process analysis, engineering, equipment manufacturing, installation and post-sale 24-hour service.