Acid rains caused by air pollution can lead to fatal landslides in China, scientists believe

Almaty. December 15. Silkroadnews - Acid rain caused by air pollution can lead to fatal landslides in China, scientists believe, UK edition of “Independent” reports.
“New study suggests pollutants from burning coal could have a role in triggering natural disasters. Air pollution is such a serious problem in China that it may be triggering landslides, a study suggests,” the report said.
Air pollution causes about 4,000 deaths daily, but geoscientists found not all the threats to human life used to be taken into account.
“The pollutants may also be causing fatal landslides,” the agency quoted Dr Ming Zhang and Dr Mauri McSaveney, the authors of a new study published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
Scientists believe, the acid rain caused by air pollution can weaken rock layers and trigger landslides.
At the same time, they explain, the rain can become acidic when it dissolves the gases released by burning coal, forming sulfuric and nitric acids.
Landslides usually occur when an earthquake destabilizes rock layers in mountainous areas, but there are still many assumptions about other mechanisms that could cause them.
74 people died as a result of a landslide in China in 2009, to study the causes of the disaster, researchers focused on the circumstances surrounding this event. They came to the conclusion that acid rains could reach the layers of shale stone through cracks caused by mining works, and this weakened the rocks and mountain’s composition.
Having carried out laboratory experiments, Dr Ming Zhang and Dr Mauri McSaveney found that placing shale from the 2009 landslide site in acid dissolved a mineral in the rock called calcite.
If this happened in a mountain, this process could lead to a large mass of rock sliding off a weakened layer.
In addition, scientists have suggested, acid rain can boost the active growth of microbes living in the rocks, which also leads to the destruction of the rock’s structure.