What makes up smog?
The components of smog are many, but a key few come from driving your gasoline powered car. The nastiest pollutants that come straight from your tailpipe are NOx, carbon monoxide, and VOCs. Nitrous Oxides Oxides of nitrogen are collectively referred to as N-O-subscript X, which is pronounced like “knocks.” These compounds are formed in car engines because there is nitrogen and oxygen in the air that your car uses to burn the gasoline. Nitrogen, which exists in the air as two nitrogen atoms bonded together is incredibly stable. So stable, in fact, that important historical documents like the U.S. Constitution are often preserved in a sealed box filled with nitrogen. But, at the extremely high temperatures of your car’s internal combustion chamber, nitrogen can be broken apart and recombined with other elements in the chamber, usually oxygen, and voila! NOx is created. In fact, anything burned at high enough temperatures in air is going to produce NOx. NOx is particularly noxious as an a
