Feature Channels: Environmental Health

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The U.S. transportation industry is the nation’s largest generator of greenhouse gases, accounting for nearly one-third of climate-warming emissions. To move towards a clean-energy future, developing zero-emissions technologies for heavy-duty vehicles is critical. A new partnership comprising Los Alamos National Laboratory, Advent Technology Holdings Inc., Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) will work over the next few years to bring to market high-temperature proton exchange membrane (HT-PEM) fuel cells that convert hydrogen and other renewable fuels into electricity.

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More than 91 percent of the world’s population lives in areas that exceed air quality guidelines recommended by the World Health Organization, and more people are impacted by worsening air quality each year. Ambient air pollution – including potentially harmful pollutants such as small particles and toxic gases emitted by industries, households, cars and trucks – has been shown to worsen viral respiratory infections. Now, new studies are showing a similar association between ambient air pollution and worse COVID-19 outcomes.

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Irvine, Calif., April 7, 2021 — Following last year’s successful launch of a global carbon monitor website to track and display greenhouse gas emissions from a variety of sources, an international team led by Earth system scientists from the University of California, Irvine is unveiling this week a new data resource focused on the United States.

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The deactivating effects of heat and sunlight on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are consistent across different variants of the virus, according to new research from DHS S&T.

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A new study published in Indoor Air provides design-based solutions on how to best use ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) to disinfect occupied rooms without harming individuals.

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A UCLA-led study published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research suggests that exposure during pregnancy to a wide variety of pesticides may lead to the development of central nervous system tumors during childhood.

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A dangerous toxin has been witnessed - for the first time - releasing into the air from pond scum, research published in the peer-reviewed journal Lake and Reservoir Management today shows.

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Researchers from University of Queensland, University of Melbourne, and Universidad Finis Terrae published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that studies consumer resistance to a nationwide plastic bag ban implemented in Chile in 2019.

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The risk is low that scientists could pass coronavirus to North American bats during winter research, according to a new study led by the U.S. Geological Survey.

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A new report is highlighting ways we can fight COVID-19 while indoors during cold weather periods.

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Researchers have developed a reactive electrochemical membrane that can adsorb toxins and degrade them. The technology is being applied to remove perfluoroalkyl substances from groundwater.

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Every year, an estimated four percent of the world's vegetated land surface burns, leaving more than 250 megatons of carbonized plants behind. For the first time, a study by the University of Vienna has now recorded elevated concentrations of environmentally persistent free radicals (EPFR) in these charcoals - in some cases even up to five years after the fire.

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PNNL, teaming with academia and industry, develops a novel zero-emission methane pyrolysis process that produces both hydrogen and high-value carbon solids.

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Topics surrounding asthma and power plant closures, illicit drug use and harm reduction, testing access for homeless, and varied support for pandemic measures will be highlighted in the May 2021 Issue of AJPH.

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By: Mark Blackwell Thomas | Published: March 17, 2021 | 3:09 pm | SHARE: It’s been seven years since the city of Flint, Michigan responded to a budget shortfall by switching its water source from Detroit, which draws from Lake Huron, to the Flint River. That move set off a years-long health crisis that has devastated lives and led to the indictment of the state’s former governor and eight other public officials.

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Philip Demokritou, a leader in nanoparticle and toxicology research, joins Rutgers from Harvard

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Scientists at UC San Francisco have detected 109 chemicals in a study of pregnant women, including 55 chemicals never before reported in people and 42 "mystery chemicals," whose sources and uses are unknown.

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According to a new study published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, the carbon footprint of personal protective equipment (PPE) provided to health and social care staff in England during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic was equivalent to flying from London to New York 244 times every day.

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Mary Nichols was named a Visiting Senior Fellow for a one-year term at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.  Nichols served as chair of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) – the state’s powerful air-pollution and climate regulatory agency – from 1975-1982 and 2007-2020. She was the assistant administrator for air and radiation at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in President Bill Clinton’s administration, and helped to get automakers to cooperate in achieving cleaner air during President Barack Obama’s administration.

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As the fifth anniversary of the passage of major amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act approaches this June, a University of Michigan researcher will address the impact the law has had on the regulation of industrial and commercial chemicals.

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Thailand’s PM2.5 dust particles level ranks as one of the highest in the world and poses health risks to the urban population. Having a reliable tool developed by Thais themselves to warn the public of PM2.5 dust conditions is crucial, and the “Sensor for All” project by Chula Engineering is an answer to this problem. During the past three years, a team of multidisciplinary experts of Chula Engineering has been working on installing sensor nodes, starting on the Chula campus, and expanding to cover the whole country.

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The American Cleaning Institute (ACI), the trade association for the cleaning product supply chain, joined the National Blue Ribbon Task Force to Stem COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy. This is a national effort spearheaded by The Creative Coalition in partnership with the Dean of the Yale University School of Public Health that brings together the most significant influencers and leaders in the U.S. in a national campaign aimed at reducing vaccine hesitancy across the most vulnerable communities.

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Texas Biomedical Research Institute received two Department of Defense (DoD) Defense Health Agency subcontracts, totaling nearly $2 million, to assess the efficacy of surface coating and aerosolized decontamination technologies to combat SARS-CoV-2 on surfaces and in the air.

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Recent studies estimate that we use an astounding 129 billion face masks globally every month - that is 3 million a minute. Most of them are disposable face masks made from plastic microfibers.

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Catalyzed by a Cornell University grant and Cornell sustainability research over the past decade, energy storage company Standard Hydrogen Corporation (SHC) and National Grid announced plans March 11 to build the first hydrogen “energy station” of its kind in the nation. The SHC Energy Transfer System will be built in New York’s Capital Region; completion is expected by late 2022.

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A specific wavelength of ultraviolet radiation killed more than 99.99% of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in laboratory tests, a new study has found.

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The slowdown in global warming that was observed at the end of last century was reflected by a decrease in malaria transmission in the Ethiopian highlands, according to a study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), an institution supported by "la Caixa" Foundation, and the University of Chicago.

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The mosquito protein AEG12 strongly inhibits the family of viruses that cause yellow fever, dengue, West Nile, and Zika and weakly inhibits coronaviruses, according to scientists at the National Institutes of Health and their collaborators. They found that AEG12 works by destabilizing the viral envelope, breaking its protective covering.

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Expectant women are more likely to give birth early if they have high blood levels of a chemical used in flame retardants compared with those who have limited exposure, a new study finds.

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In the spring of 2020, the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic appeared to coincide with the tree pollen season in the northern hemisphere.

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The University of Minnesota School of Music was concerned about one-on-one teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic and wondered if it should supplement its ventilation system with portable HEPA air purifiers. So, school officials reached out to Suo Yang, a professor within the College of Science and Engineering, and his team to figure it out. In Physics of Fluids, Yang and the researchers describe their work to predict how virus particles spread within a music classroom.

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More than 500,000 Americans Live Within Three Miles of Natural Gas Flares - UCLA Fielding School of Public Health researcher Lara Cushing, assistant professor of environmental health sciences, co-authors nationwide assessment of the population facing exposure risks from the burning off of excess natural gas at oil and gas production sites

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DNA sequencing of bacteria found in pigs and humans in rural eastern North Carolina, an area with concentrated industrial-scale pig-farming, suggests that multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains are spreading between pigs, farmworkers, their families and community residents, and represents an emerging public health threat, according to a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

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The Deepwater Horizon disaster began on April 20, 2010 with an explosion on a BP-operated oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers.

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In the 1995 movie "Outbreak," Dustin Hoffman's character realizes, with appropriately dramatic horror, that an infectious virus is "airborne" because it's found to be spreading through hospital vents.

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According to the World Health Organization (WHO), plastic products and their chemical derivatives present in the environment present public health concerns, including elevated risk of cancer. Researchers from Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey explored to what extent common components in microplastic pollutants cause DNA damage in human cells.

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In a recent collaborative study led by the University of Maryland (UMD), researchers find that consumers tend to buy something less fuel efficient than they normally would for their second car after springing for an eco-friendly vehicle.

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The New York State Center for Clean Water Technology (CCWT) at Stony Brook University has made a series of critical discoveries regarding a new approach to protecting Long Island’s drinking water, groundwater, and surface waters. Some of the discoveries involve 1,4-dioxane.

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Researchers in the U.S. and Germany decided to explore which pathways transport debris to the middle of the oceans, causing garbage patches, as well as the relative strengths of different subtropical gyres and how they influence long-term accumulation of debris. In Chaos, they report creating a model of the oceans' surface dynamics from historical trajectories of surface buoys. Their model describes the probability of plastic debris being transported from one region to another.

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RGF® Environmental Group, Inc., a leading environmental design and manufacturing company, has released the results of a third-party test that proves the PHI-PKG14 PHI-CELL® product with Photohydroionization® technology inactivates greater than 99.96% of airborne SARS-CoV-2 virus.

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George Peridas, director of carbon management partnerships, and staff scientist Briana Schmidt from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will be available to discuss results from a new report titled “Permitting Carbon Capture and Storage in California” that examined the regulatory framework for authorizing carbon capture and storage in California and offers options for government and project developers to enable robust, transparent and efficient project permitting in line with the state’s goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2045 or earlier.

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To reach economy-wide carbon-neutrality by 2045 or earlier, California will likely have to capture, transport and geologically store tens of millions of tons per year of carbon dioxide (CO2) from large sources and from the atmosphere. California has an extensive regulatory framework that is rigorous, robust and will safeguard the environment, public health and safety during these activities. However, this framework cannot handle the timely permitting and deployment of sufficient projects to protect the rapidly worsening climate and support achieving the state’s climate goals, according to a report by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).

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Takeaway coffees – they’re a convenient start for millions of people each day, but while the caffeine perks us up, the disposable cups drag us down, with nearly 300 billion ending up in landfill each year. While most coffee drinkers are happy to make a switch to sustainable practices, new research from the University of South Australia shows that an absence of infrastructure and a general ‘throwaway’ culture is severely delaying sustainable change.

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Rutgers scientists for the first time have pinpointed the sizes of microplastics from a highly urbanized estuarine and coastal system with numerous sources of fresh water, including the Hudson River and Raritan River. Their study of tiny pieces of plastic in the Hudson-Raritan Estuary in New Jersey and New York indicates that stormwater could be an important source of the plastic pollution that plagues oceans, bays, rivers and other waters and threatens aquatic and other life.

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Argonne scientists are using wastewater-based epidemiology to provide a safe and cost-effective way to measure community spread of COVID-19 and the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

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Measuring carbon nanotubes taken up by plants

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In a long-term study in a Salt Lake-area building, researchers found that the amount of air pollution that comes indoors depends on the type of outdoor pollution. Wildfires, fireworks and wintertime inversions all affect indoor air to different degrees.