More Carbon Emissions Will Kill More People; Here's How Many
Earth Institute at Columbia UniversityA just-published study coins a new metric: the "mortality cost of carbon.
A just-published study coins a new metric: the "mortality cost of carbon.
A model of the eastern California forests of the Sierra Nevada looks at the longer-term future of wildfires under future climate change scenarios. Results show an initial roughly decade-long burst of wildfire activity, followed by recurring fires of decreasing area — a pattern that could apply to other drought-prone regions of the West.
Woods Hole, Mass. (July 26, 2021) — In September of 2017, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution postdoctoral scholar Maggie Johnson was conducting an experiment with a colleague in Bocas del Toro off the Caribbean coast of Panama. After sitting on a quiet, warm open ocean, they snorkeled down to find a peculiar layer of murky, foul-smelling water about 10 feet below the surface, with brittle stars and sea urchins, which are usually in hiding, perching on the tops of coral.
Air pollution in India is generated more by the wealthy, while the poor suffer most of the health impact, according to a study by five IIASA researchers published in Nature Sustainability.
A new study has found plastic accumulation in foods may be underestimated.
An adhesive tape patented by Staffordshire University researchers to recover trace evidence from crimes scenes is being adopted to analyse microplastics more efficiently.
Chula’s Faculty of Engineering joins hands with PTT to develop a 2 in1 face mask, an innovation that protects against PM2.5 dust particles and COVID-19 virus that can be reused more than 15 times, helps reduce waste, is pollution-free, and will be available for sale soon.
In a first-of-its-kind study that combines assessments of the risks of toxic emissions, nontoxic emissions and people’s vulnerability to them, Notre Dame researchers found a strong and statistically significant relationship between the spatial distribution of global climate risk and toxic pollution.
A new GW study of COVID-19 shutdowns in the United States reveals pronounced disparities in air pollution — with disenfranchised, minority neighborhoods still experiencing more exposure to a harmful air pollutant compared to wealthier, white communities.
Wildfire smoke may greatly increase susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, according to new research from the Center for Genomic Medicine at the Desert Research Institute (DRI), Washoe County Health District (WCHD), and Renown Health (Renown) in Reno, Nev.
An Engineering professor, Chulalongkorn University has successfully converted carbon dioxide to methanol via a thermochemical method that consumes less energy and provides more yield, providing an alternative solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stimulate the circular economy.
Army-funded research identified a new chemistry approach that could remove micropollutants from the environment.
The University of Portsmouth is now a key member of a collaborative effort funded by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) and industry to tackle the growing global crisis of plastic waste.
In 2015, 170 countries worldwide adopted the Paris Agreement, with the goal limiting the average global temperature increase to 1.5°C.
Throughout the pandemic, air sensors watched during lockdowns as air pollution fell in residential and commercial areas, and then as pollution rose again with reopenings. The changing levels, the researchers found, which behaved differently in residential and commercial parts of the city, show where pollution is coming from and how it might change in the future under different policies.
IIASA researchers and international colleagues are calling for immediate action to establish responsibility for carbon debt by implementing carbon removal obligations.
Companies like Purple Air and IQAir, with air pollution sensors that cost under $300, have brought air quality monitoring to the masses. But when Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist Tom Kirchstetter looked at Purple Air’s map last year during wildfire season, he noticed a big hole in Richmond, a city of 110,000 to the north of Berkeley.
A new study shows how urbanisation has influenced anthropogenic CO2 and air pollutant emissions across all world regions, by making use of the latest developments in the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR, https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/) developed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.
Changes in the colour and intensity of light pollution over the past few decades result in complex and unpredictable effects on animal vision, new research shows.
Plastic is notoriously hard to break down, but researchers in Austria have found that bacteria from a cow's rumen - one of the four compartments of its stomach - can digest certain types of the ubiquitous material, representing a sustainable way to reduce plastic litter.
In a new issue of Science, devoted to the plastics problem, University of Delaware researchers LaShanda Korley and Thomas Epps, III, join collaborators in calling for new approaches to plastics design, production and use, with the goal of keeping plastics out of landfills and waterways, reusing the valuable resources they represent indefinitely in a “circular” plastics economy.
Irvine, Calif., June 29, 2021 – Fireworks are synonymous in the United States with the celebration of Independence Day and other special events, but the colorful displays have caused a growing risk to public safety in recent years, according to a study by environmental health researchers at the University of California, Irvine.
In Physics of Fluids, researchers have developed a method to turn biodegradable plastic knives, spoons, and forks into a foam that can be used as insulation in walls or in flotation devices. The investigators placed the cutlery into a chamber filled with carbon dioxide. As pressure increased, the gas dissolved into the plastic. When they suddenly released the pressure in the chamber, the carbon dioxide expanded within the plastic, creating foaming.
Researchers from the University of Washington provide a first look at the probability of observing common birds as air pollution worsens during wildfire seasons. They found that smoke affected the ability to detect more than a third of the bird species studied in Washington state over a four-year period. Sometimes smoke made it harder to observe birds, while other species were actually easier to detect when smoke was present.
The study, published in the Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, analyzed 13 years of satellite and surface to better understand how aerosols impact cloud lifecycle and precipitation during the autumn months over northern Taiwan.
Using a diverse set of tools, the lab of Randall Martin shows how the pandemic did – or didn’t – affect levels of particulate matter during COVID lockdowns.
The Oak Ridge Reservation is contaminated with acidic, high-nitrate-and high-metal substances. Microbes in this environment can use molybdenum to remove nitrate, but the low concentration of molybdenum at Oak Ridge limits how much nitrate the microbes can remove. Two studies examine why molybdenum is limited and the mechanisms some microbes use to survive these conditions.
A new United Nations report calls for an urgent change in the way the world’s oceans are managed.
Think about how many different pieces of technology the average household has purchased in the last decade.
Bacteria from an Indian landfill could help eliminate contaminated chemicals. The focus is on pesticides such as lindane or brominated flame retardants, which accumulate in nature and in food chains. Researchers at Empa and Eawag used these bacteria to generate enzymes that can break down these dangerous chemicals.
A recent study shows bioreactors effectively remove nitrogen over time
Researchers reporting in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology have analyzed more than 25 years of Antarctic data, finding that ozone concentrations near the ground arose from both natural and human-related sources.
Researchers reporting in Environmental Science & Technology have analyzed antibiotic-resistance genes (ARGs) on five types of microplastics at different locations along the Beilun River in China, finding much higher abundances in urban than rural regions.
Women exposed to higher levels of air pollution during pregnancy have babies who grow unusually fast in the first months after birth, putting on excess fat that puts them at risk of obesity and related diseases later in life, new CU Boulder research shows.
Women in three Latin American countries who rely on fish for protein and live in proximity to gold mining activity have been found to have elevated mercury levels, according to a new study, Mercury Exposure of Women in Four Latin American Gold Mining Countries. The study was conducted by the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN) together with Biodiversity Research Institute.
Comprehensive evaluation of source sector, fuel contributions to the PM2.5 disease burden analyzed across over 200 countries
The free online series of short videos are designed to provide basic, jargon-free scientific information on harmful algal blooms: what they are; where they live and grow; and causes, impacts, and potential mitigation of blooms. The series is directed toward resource managers and decision-makers as well as the general public.
Carbon footprint declarations are used in construction to ease product selection for low carbon building, but these standards don’t yet exist for green elements like soil, bushes and plants. A new study led by Aalto University is the first to map out how green infrastructure can be a resource for cities on the path to carbon neutrality.
Plastic bottles drifting in the sea; bags in the stomachs of turtles; Covid-19 masks dancing in the surf: few images are as unpleasant to look at as those that show the contamination of our oceans.
Researchers have created a plant-based, sustainable, scalable material that could replace single-use plastics in many consumer products.
Iowa State students, faculty and staff are planning for what will happen to the approximately 500 plexiglass barriers that were erected to protect public health during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Produced in a sustainable way, synthetic fuels contribute to switching mobility to renewable energy and to achieving the climate goals in road traffic. In the mobility demonstrator "move" Empa researchers are investigating the production of synthetic methane from an energy, technical and economic perspective – a project with global potential.
Aerosol reductions that would take place as countries meet climate goals could contribute to global cooling and prevent more than one million annual premature deaths over a decade, according to a new study from the University of California San Diego.
Abby Kinchy, a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, will seek to learn how can people try to reduce the harms caused by lead in the soil of their communities with the support of a Scholars Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Researchers reporting in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology Letters have conducted an extensive airborne campaign with imaging spectrometers and identified large methane sources across the Permian Basin area.
Pollution from manufacturing is now widespread, affecting all regions in the world, with serious ecological, economic, and political consequences.
A new study in Global Biogeochemical Cycles shows per-area greenhouse gas emissions from the world's water reservoirs are around 29% higher than suggested by previous studies, but that practical measures could be taken to help reduce that impact.
Wildflowers found to absorb runoff just as effectively as turfgrass, among other benefits
Plastic pollution has been found in seawater, on beaches and inside marine animals at the Galapagos Islands.
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