Feature Channels: Pollution

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Research shows that the use of corn ethanol reduces the carbon footprint and diminishes greenhouse gases.

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New research from Florida State University shows that concentrations of the toxic element mercury in rivers and fjords connected to the Greenland Ice Sheet are comparable to rivers in industrial China, an unexpected finding that is raising questions about the effects of glacial melting in an area that is a major exporter of seafood. 

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Women who were highly exposed to ultra-fine particles in air pollution during their pregnancy were more likely to have children who developed asthma, according to a study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine in May. This is the first time asthma has been linked with prenatal exposure to this type of air pollution, which is named for its tiny size and which is not regulated or routinely monitored in the United States.

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The chemical bisphenol F (found in plastics) can induce changes in a gene that is vital for neurological development. This discovery was made by researchers at the universities of Uppsala and Karlstad, Sweden.

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Karina Sanchez, a Biological Education Ph.D. candidate at the University of Northern Colorado, has been awarded a $20,000 American Dissertation Fellowship award from the American Association of University Women (AAUW), an organization that promotes education and equity for women and girls. Her dissertation involves researching how noise and light pollution and landscape composition in urban settings affects American robins, specifically their bird song.

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Air quality standards recommended by the American Thoracic Society (ATS) have the potential to prevent more illness and death than standards adopted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to research presented at the ATS 2021 International Conference.

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Irvine, Calif., May 17, 2021 — Greenhouse gases and aerosol pollution emitted by human activities are responsible for increases in the frequency, intensity and duration of droughts around the world, according to researchers at the University of California, Irvine. In a study published recently in Nature Communications, scientists in UCI’s Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering showed that over the past century, the likelihood of stronger and more long-lasting dry spells grew in the Americas, the Mediterranean, western and southern Africa and eastern Asia.

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Environmental chemist's work demonstrated conclusively that CFCs were responsible for the massive destruction of stratospheric ozone

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A new study in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology indicates that in China, indoor air pollution from residential coal burning causes a disproportionate number of premature deaths from exposure to tiny, inhalable pollutants known as PM2.5.

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A new paper in the May issue of Nature Communications demonstrates why keeping local lakes and other waterbodies clean produces cost-effective benefits locally and globally.

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The Geosciences Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research announced the 2021 awardees for excellence in student research: Zoe Lacey (Trinity University) and Hanna Szydlowski (Grand Valley State University)

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A massive collaborative research project covered in the journal Nature this week offers projections to the year 2100 of future sea-level rise from all sources of land ice, offering the most complete projections created to date.

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To mark Clean Air Month, the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation (PFF) aims to increase public understanding of the role air pollution has in the development of interstitial lung diseases (ILD) such as pulmonary fibrosis (PF), including how polluted air can make you sick and the telltale signs to be aware of.

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Over the coming decades, our economy and society will need to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions as called for in the Paris Agreement.

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The images leave no one cold: giant vortices of floating plastic trash in the world's oceans with sometimes devastating consequences for their inhabitants – the sobering legacy of our modern lifestyle. Weathering and degradation processes produce countless tiny particles that can now be detected in virtually all ecosystems. But how dangerous are the smallest of them, so-called nanoplastics? Are they a ticking time bomb, as alarming media reports suggest? In the latest issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology, a team from Empa and ETH Zurich examines the state of current knowledge – or lack thereof – and points out how these important questions should be addressed.

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Exposure to air pollution, even over the course of just a few weeks, can impede mental performance, according to a new study led by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

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In advance of a wildfire season projected to be among the worst, the American Thoracic Society has released a report that calls for a unified federal response to wildfires that includes investment in research on smoke exposure and forecasting, health impacts of smoke, evaluation of interventions, and a clear and coordinated communication strategy to protect public health.

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New research from the University of Utah ties the worsening trend of extreme poor air quality events in Western regions to wildfire activity, with growing trends of smoke impacting air quality clear into September.

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New research indicates that the computer-based models currently used to simulate how Earth's climate will change in the future underestimate the impact that forest fires and drying climate are having on the world's northernmost forests, which make up the largest forest biome on the planet.

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Toxic pollution hits poorer populations hardest as firms experience more pollutant releases and spend less money on waste management in areas with lower average incomes.

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Science Snapshots From Berkeley Lab – Water purification, infant-warming device, cuff-based heart disease monitor, ancient magnetic fields

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A new study that models peoples’ exposure to air pollution—resolved by race-ethnicity and income level—shows that exposure disparities among people of color and white people are driven by nearly all, rather than only a few, emission source types.

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In an effort to fight the millions of tons of marine litter floating in the ocean, Florida State University researchers have developed a new virtual tool to track this debris. Their work, which was published in Frontiers in Marine Science, will help provide answers to help monitor and deal with the problem of marine litter.

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Today at the Microbiology Society's Annual Conference, Yang Liu, researcher at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, will discuss a new technique to trap and recover microplastics.

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Asthma exacerbations rose following a catastrophic Christmas Eve fire that destroyed pollution controls at the Clairton Coke Works – the largest such facility in the nation, a University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health analysis concludes.

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Nitrogen is essential for crops, but when it gets into the water supply, it spells big trouble. Scientists are trying to help farmers strike the right balance by measuring their fields.

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Scientists from NYU, University of Portsmouth, and Hamilton College will discuss recent work on sea level rise, the science of “blue carbon” stored in the sea, and important policy changes to reduce plastic pollution in the ocean.

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Researchers at the University of Delaware’s Center for Plastics Innovation (CPI) have developed a process called hydrocracking to convert single-use plastic waste into ready-to-use molecules for jet fuels, diesel and lubricants. The process requires 50% less energy than other technologies and doesn’t add carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And it can treat a variety of plastics, even when they are mixed together.

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With climate change looming, what must people hear to convince them to change their ways to stop harming the environment? A new Johns Hopkins University study finds stories to be significantly more motivating than scientific facts— at least for some people.

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An interdisciplinary group of Spanish scientists, bringing together biologists and chemists from the Universities of Seville, Huelva, the Autonomous University of Madrid and the Institute of Marine Sciences of Andalusia of the CSIC in Cadiz, have just published the results of their pioneering research studying the management of marinas.

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UC Riverside engineers are developing methods to estimate the impact of California's destructive wildfires on air quality in neighborhoods affected by the smoke from these fires.

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Irvine, Calif., April 22, 2021 — California’s wildfire problem, fueled by a concurrence of climate change and a heightened risk of human-caused ignitions in once uninhabited areas, has been getting worse with each passing year of the 21st century. Researchers in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Irvine have conducted a thorough analysis of California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection wildfire statistics from 2000 to 2019, comparing them with data from 1920 to 1999.

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GEOMAR study points to possible major changes in the marine ecosystem

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A new study by a team including researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley reports that the social cost of methane – a greenhouse gas that is 30 times as potent as carbon dioxide in its ability to trap heat – varies by as much as an order of magnitude between industrialized and developing regions of the world.

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Scientists at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley have designed an enzyme-activated compostable plastic that could diminish microplastics pollution. Household tap water or soil composts break the hybrid plastic material down to reusable small molecules, called monomers, in just a few days or weeks.

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As Earth Day approaches, a promising startup that grew out of University of Delaware research is on the cusp of making sustainable green hydrogen a reality. Versogen, a UD spinoff company led by Professor Yushan Yan, is one of three startups selected for the fourth cohort of the Shell GameChanger Accelerator (GCxN) program.

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Just adapting to climate change is not something the world can afford to do. So, the CSU is exploring all options to thwart potentially disastrous consequences.

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Pollution from miniscule pieces of plastic, or microplastics, have been a growing concern for scientists, public health advocates and environmentalists as these nondegradable items have increasingly made their way into waterways and even the air we breathe. Now, scientists are showing that they might be altering cellular function.

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Plastics cycle through the oceans and roadways and become plastic dust, which rides the jet stream across continents.

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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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A new commentary published online in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society provides an exhaustive examination of published research that discusses whether air pollution may be linked to worse COVID-19 outcomes. The studies that the authors examined look at several potential disease mechanisms, and also at the relationship between pollution, respiratory viruses and health disparities.

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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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Water quality management in the ocean often targets visible pollution sources such as sewage, rivers or ships. A new global study, led by researchers at the University of Gothenburg, reveals that invisible groundwater discharges may be just as important driving nitrogen into coastal waters.

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Qingzhi Zhu, PhD, Associate Professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) at Stony Brook University, has received a SUNY Technology Accelerator Fund (TAF) award for his research to develop a low-cost, high-accuracy nitrogen detecting system for wastewater systems.

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Researchers monitored the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic impacted food purchasing, pantry management and food waste and shaped our concerns about environmental regulatory changes and virus transmission. They found that the food system is a lot more fragile than previously thought.

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An international group of scientists from India and Russia has created edible food films for packaging fruits, vegetables, poultry, meat, and seafood.