Study: Actually, potted plants don't improve indoor air quality
Drexel UniversityPlants can help spruce up a home or office space, but claims about their ability to improve the air quality are vastly overstated
Plants can help spruce up a home or office space, but claims about their ability to improve the air quality are vastly overstated
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
New York University will host a “An Evening of Denial,” a panel discussion centering on the rejection of scientific knowledge, on Mon., Nov. 4.
A mother’s exposure to particulate air pollution during pregnancy is associated with reduced cardiac response to stress in six-month-old infants, according to Mount Sinai research published in Environmental Health Perspectives in October. This study is the first to find that particulate air pollution exposure in utero can affect heart rate variability, which is a known risk factor for health issues.
You’d think that losing 25 percent of your genes would be a big problem for survival. But not for red algae, including the seaweed used to wrap sushi. An ancestor of red algae lost about a quarter of its genes roughly one billion years ago, but the algae still became dominant in near-shore coastal areas around the world, according to Rutgers University–New Brunswick Professor Debashish Bhattacharya, who co-authored a study in the journal Nature Communications.
Wildfires continue to burn throughout Southern California, forcing many people to evacuate their homes and workplaces. Even if you don't live in an evacuation zone, smoke from the fires can pose a serious health risk.
A Q&A with Berkeley Lab indoor air scientists on protecting homes, schools, and other buildings, from air pollution during wildfires.
The fight against harmful ozone is under legal threat. Air quality and carbon emissions regulations are currently in limbo in courts and congress, from core legislation from the 1970s to rules from the last U.S. administration. This study models the future losses in the fight to drive down respiratory-damaging, ground-level ozone if the regulations go away.
Tangles in courts and in Congress threaten emissions-related energy regulations and incentives. If these are lost, carbon emissions are projected to climb, and the fight against health-damaging ozone may lose traction, allowing it to resurge, too. An expert explains the legal messes.
Nancy Fiedler, a professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health and deputy director of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute, who is studying how pesticide exposure affects fetuses in each trimester of pregnancy, says it is unknown exactly when children are the most vulnerable, but says there is no question that most children – even those who live outside of agricultural areas where pesticides are sprayed – are at risk. Fiedler, who researches the effects of neurotoxicants, including pesticides, on human brain function and development, discusses how children are exposed and what parents can do to keep them safe.
World governments and other leadership bodies are taking vital steps to protect the ocean but more progress is urgently needed, Oregon State University scientists reported today at the Our Ocean Conference.
A multi-institutional collaboration reports a catalytic method for selectively converting discarded plastics into higher quality products. The team included Argonne National Laboratory, Ames Laboratory, Northwestern University and three other universities.
Small, centuries-old dams are of no use to humans. But researchers will use NSF grants to examine whether removing them will harm water quality. Blocking the water makes soil upstream richer in carbon, which acts as an important filter of nitrogen, a key pollutant in our nation's waterways.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists are now using plasma physics to predict the characteristics of volcanic hazardous ash plumes.
A group of 46 scientists from around the world, led by Joseph Veldman, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Texas A&M University, are urging caution regarding plans to address climate change through massive tree planting.
A new Tulane University study says elevated concentrations of arsenic in groundwater from the upper Chicot aquifer in Cow Island is almost certainly naturally occurring.
Anthropogenic noise pollution (ANP) is a globally invasive phenomenon impacting natural systems, but most research has occurred at local scales with few species. Researchers in this study investigated continental‐scale breeding season associations with ANP for 322 bird species to test whether local‐scale predictions related to breeding habitat, migratory behavior, body mass, and vocal traits are consistent at broad spatial extents for an extensive group of North American bird species in the continental United States.
Early childhood life in the womb is particularly sensitive to the effects of environmental pollutants. A team from Empa and the University of Vienna has now for the first time been able to show how a pollutant from contaminated food - the environmental estrogen zearalenone - spreads in the womb and is metabolized into harmful metabolites.
A study published by researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) shows that polystyrene, one of the world’s most ubiquitous plastics, may degrade in decades or centuries when exposed to sunlight, rather than thousands of years as previously thought. The study published October 10, 2019, in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters.
Local conservation can boost the climate resilience of coastal ecosystems, species and cities and buy them precious time in their fight against sea-level rise
Using geographic information systems (GIS) and archaeology to model industrial hazards in postindustrial cities to guide planning and development.
Travellers are willing to pay a little more for flights if they know the extra money will be used to address carbon emissions, a new study from the UBC Sauder School of Business has found.
Just by breathing or wearing deodorant, you have more influence over your office space than you might think, a growing body of evidence shows.
A new study is the first to report evidence that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like aspirin may lessen the adverse effects of air pollution exposure on lung function.
A researcher at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) is examining how the flight routes people take to get to tourist destinations impact the amount of pollution in the air in a newly published study he coauthored in the Annals of Tourism Research.
Researchers have discovered that bleach fumes, in combination with light and a citrus compound found in many household products, can form airborne particles that might be harmful when inhaled by pets or people.
A unified approach may benefit water quality, environment more than piecemeal
Newly released public-private research proposes a new method for calculating carbon tax rates based on environmental, economic, and social factors, including the costs the public pays for carbon usage such as damage to agriculture, vulnerable coastal infrastructure, and risk to human health.
The University of California, Irvine was awarded $1 million by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) to participate in the first year of a major multi-site health study to investigate the relationship between drinking water contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and health outcomes.
U.S. cities could see a decline in mortality rates and an improved economy through midcentury if federal and local governments maintain stringent air pollution policies and diminish concentrations of diesel freight truck exhaust, according to Cornell University research.
A two year study into the prevalence of antibiotic resistance in urban coastal environments shows that some beaches around Sydney have elevated levels of antibiotic resistant (AbR) bacteria following rainfall.
Ecologist Ted Schuur was one of the lead author's on the report's polar regions chapter. His research focuses on permafrost
With the United States withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, questions arise about the future global success of mitigating the effects of climate change. A new study addresses these questions in a recently published paper in the Journal of Theoretical Politics.
Three new studies by scientists at Cincinnati Children’s, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Cincinnati, highlight the relationship between air pollution and mental health in children.
Scientific evidence proves that poor air quality affects health, and Long Beach, California residents should be concerned. Long Beach ranks last for air quality among the 100 largest U.S. cities, according to the 2019 American Fitness Index® rankings published by ACSM and the Anthem Foundation.