Just when you thought it was safe to go out in wet weather, acid rain "may have a sequel," said Popular Mechanics, and "like most sequels, it's arguably worse." It also might not have a happy ending because tackling a "forever chemical," which is now coming down in rain and being found in "everything from drinking water to human blood," may be an "impossible task".
Scientists started studying acid rain in the 1960s, and by the 1980s it had become the most discussed environmental issue of the time, in both news media and popular culture. "At its worst," the first era of acid rain "stripped forests bare in Europe, wiped lakes clear of life in parts of Canada and the U.S." and damaged human health and crops in China, said the BBC.
It came from rising concentrations of sulphuric acid produced mostly by gas-driven cars and coal-fired power stations. Acid rain became less of a problem as power sources evolved, but now there's a "new anthropogenic source" that is "possibly more pervasive, more persistent and more sinister," Popular Mechanics said: When rain, or snow, falls, a human-made chemical called trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) is falling with it.
And TFA's aren't the only pollutant raining from the skies. "Plastic rain" is the "new acid rain," according to Wired. In 2020, researchers found that more than 1,100 tons of microplastic fell on 11 national parks and protected areas in the western U.S. each year — the equivalent of more than 120 million plastic water bottles. Expanded worldwide, this plastic rain "could prove to be a more insidious problem than acid rain." | 
