The earth's atmosphere weighs 5.5 * 10^15 tons. Let's call "billions of pounds of contaminated whatever a year" millions of tons. Let's even say it's 5.5 million tons a year to be generous.
Got a calculator?
5.5 * 10^15 divided by 5.5 * 10^6 is a billion years. It would take 1 million years to make a 0.1% concentration of "contaminated whatever", so yes, you can indeed add billions of pounds each year without effect. My question is how are you going to keep it all from falling back down while you go about your million-year long task?
Mariss |