Feature Channels: Pollution

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A multidisciplinary team of University of Utah Health scientists has received a five-year, $3 million grant from the National Institutes of variations in pollutant-sensing genes in the lungs could influence air pollution’s effects on children who have asthma. Health to investigate how variations in pollutant-sensing genes in the lungs could influence air pollution’s effects on children who have asthma.

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The Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) inducted William Ruckelshaus to the Pantheon of Risk Analysis. The Pantheon, established in 2008, recognizes luminaries and visionaries in risk analysis and serves to illustrate how the field contributes to the advancement of knowledge and public good.

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Carbon capture and storage (CCS) will play a vital role in helping the world cut its carbon dioxide emissions, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says.

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A new report from the National Toxicology Program (NTP) suggests that traffic-related air pollution increases a pregnant woman’s risk for dangerous increases in blood pressure, known as hypertension.

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Continually logging and re-growing tropical forests to supply timber is reducing the levels of vital nutrients in the soil, which may limit future forest growth and recovery, a new study suggests. This raises concerns about the long-term sustainability of logging in the tropics.

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Exposure to underwater pile driving noise, which can be associated with the construction of docks, piers, and offshore wind farms, causes squid to exhibit strong alarm behaviors, according to a study by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers published Dec. 16, 2019, in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin.

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Toxic environmental agents, to which anyone is involuntarily exposed, represent non-negligible risk for human health and, therefore, environmental contamination has become a theme of primary importance worldwide.

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Air pollution exposure threatens human health both outdoors and when polluted air infiltrates homes, offices, schools and vehicles. Exposure to certain particulate matter can cause respiratory, cardiovascular and nervous system issues, especially in vulnerable populations. Several presentations at the 2019 Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) Annual Meeting will explore new ways to measure and track air pollutants to reduce public health risk.

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In London air pollution contributes to thousands of premature deaths a year, with many others suffering the adverse health effects of air pollution exposure.

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Dead zones within the world's oceans - where there is almost no oxygen to sustain life - could be expanding far quicker than currently thought, a new study suggests.

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Understanding what influences the amount of methane in the atmosphere has been identified by the American Geophysical Union to be one of the foremost challenges in the earth sciences in the coming decades because of methane's hugely important role in meeting climate warming targets.

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The identification of natural carbon sinks and understanding how they work is critical if humans are to mitigate global climate change. Tropical coastal wetlands are considered important but, so far, there is little data to show the benefits.

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A new survey released by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future finds that the majority of registered voters support greater oversight of industrial animal farms. The Center for a Livable Future is based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

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Microplastics are receiving a lot of attention lately due to its difficulty in removal from the environment.

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Dec. 6, 2019 – Reductions in air pollution yielded fast and dramatic impacts on health-outcomes, as well as decreases in all-cause morbidity, according to findings in “Health Benefits of Air Pollution Reduction,” new research published in the American Thoracic Society’s journal, Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

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A new article in Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology shows a significant association between multiple prenatal and early life exposures to indoor pollutants and the degree of allergic sensitivity in 2-year-olds.

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A team of Florida State University researchers studying new methods to remove toxic heavy metals from biosolids — the solid waste left over after sewage treatment — found the key is a brief spin through a microwave. The method removed three times the amount of lead from biosolids compared to conventional means and could reduce the total cost of processing by more than 60 percent, making it a possible engineering solution to help produce fertilizer and allow more people to live with clean soil and water.

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Long-term exposure to hydrocarbons in the air may be a risk factor for ischemic stroke development, according to a study published December 4, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Han-Wei Zhang of China Medical University, Taiwan, and colleagues.

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Researchers have created the first comprehensive database of all the wildfire fuels that have been measured across North America. Ultimately, it can help scientists make more informed decisions about fire and smoke situations.

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Cornell University engineering students are working with an Ithaca, New York, engineering firm to help New York City lower its carbon footprint.

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New research reported in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology on one of the permitted neonicotinoids indicates it effectively controls pests and might even help bees.

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Research from a leading international expert on the health of the Great Lakes suggests that the growing intensity and scale of pollution from plastics poses serious risks to human health and will continue to have profound consequences on the ecosystem.

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UCLA study finds even a short-term visit to a severely polluted city is bad for your health

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A team led by the University of Manchester has developed a metal-organic framework material providing a selective, reversible and repeatable capability to capture a toxic air pollutant, nitrogen dioxide, which is produced by combusting fossil fuels. The material then requires only water and air to convert the captured gas into nitric acid for industrial use.

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Women in their 70s and 80s who were exposed to higher levels of air pollution experienced greater declines in memory and more Alzheimer's-like brain atrophy than their counterparts who breathed cleaner air, according to USC researchers.

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Researchers report in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology that pollutant exposure varies with certain demographic factors.

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Researchers reporting in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology have linked high levels of DDT in Indian immigrants in the U.S. with risk factors for diabetes.

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University of Washington researchers have found that air pollution from electricity generation emissions in 2014 led to about 16,000 premature deaths in the continental U.S.

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Researchers from Queen’s University Belfast have found noise pollution is threatening the survival of more than 100 different species.

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Metal copper from agricultural runoff and marine paint leaching from boat hulls poses an emerging threat to soft coral sea fans in the waters around Puerto Rico.

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Artificial light at night negatively impacts thousands of species: beetles, moths, wasps and other insects that have evolved to use light levels as cues for courtship, foraging and navigation. Writing in Biological Conservation, Brett Seymoure, the Grossman Family Postdoctoral Fellow of the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in St.

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Leipzig. An international research team was able to experimentally show in the laboratory a completely new reaction path for the largest natural sulfur source in the atmosphere.

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Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas and one of the main stratospheric ozone depleting substances on the planet. According to new research, we are releasing more of it into the atmosphere than previously thought.

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The tread on the tyre is worn out, new tyres are needed. Everyday life for many drivers. But where do these lost centimetres of tyre tread "disappear" to? As micro-rubbers, they mainly end up in soil and water and, to a small extent, in the air. And the amount of these particles in our environment is anything but small, as Empa researchers have now calculated.

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Insects, crustaceans and other water macroinvertebrates are more affected by the effect of sediment accumulation in river courses than the excess of nitrate in water environments, according to a study published in the journal PLOS ONE.

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For years, China processed more than half of the world’s plastic recycling. Then, in 2018, it stopped. Things have gotten messy since then.

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Although nitrogen is essential for all living organisms -- it makes up 3% of the human body -- and comprises 78% of Earth's atmosphere, it's almost ironically difficult for plants and natural systems to access it.

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New, late-breaking research discovered that there are significant associations between anti-citrullinated protein bodies (ACPA), a characteristic biomarker for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and industrial emissions of fine particles matter and sulfur dioxide.

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Too many of the plastic cups, chip bags, cigarette butts and take-out containers you see littering California’s beaches don’t stay on the sand. An estimated 17.6 billion pounds of plastic make their way into the world’s oceans annually, the equivalent of dumping a garbage truck full of plastic into the ocean every minute—and 80 percent of that comes directly from littering on land.

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Adding plants and trees to the landscapes near factories and other pollution sources could reduce air pollution by an average of 27 percent, new research suggests. The study shows that plants – not technologies – may also be cheaper options for cleaning the air near a number of industrial sites, roadways, power plants, commercial boilers and oil and gas drilling sites. In fact, researchers found that in 75 percent of the counties analyzed, it was cheaper to use plants to mitigate air pollution than it was to add technological interventions – things like smokestack scrubbers – to the sources of pollution.

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Plants can help spruce up a home or office space, but claims about their ability to improve the air quality are vastly overstated

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Technologies to mitigate pollution have become widespread in recent years, but scientists are now exploring a new, pared-down approach: using nature to restore ecological balance. They report their findings in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology.

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Tips for this month include: • More heart valve patients now are able to choose minimally invasive procedures instead of open heart surgery. • Our experts tell how to protect your lungs during wildfire season. • Cedars-Sinai scored a perfect 100 on the Human Rights Campaign's Healthcare Equality Index. • 3D mammograms are becoming more popular and could save more lives. • Men's Health experts available to discuss "Movember" topics. • Flu experts also available

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Roughly 85% of recently installed HVAC systems in K-12 classrooms investigated in California did not provide adequate ventilation, according to a study from UC Davis and the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

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According to a new study published today [Nov. 4, 2019] in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 40 years of reduced mercury use, emissions, and loading in the Great Lakes region have largely not produced equivalent declines in the amount of mercury accumulating in large game fish.

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Although concentrations of chemicals and pollutants like salt and nutrients have increased in the deep waters of Lake George, they’re still too low to harm the ecosystem at those depths, according to an analysis of nearly 40 years of data published Thursday in Limnology and Oceanography.

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In a new article published by Harvard Law School, Janet McCabe, director of the Environmental Resilience Institute, details how the Trump Administration is weakening one of the long-established cornerstones of the Clean Air Act to appease industry at the expense of public health.