Feature Channels: Pollution

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Mechanical engineer Jennifer Wade is leading two federally funded projects that are addressing the critical question of how to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, thus slowing the devastating effects of global climate change. It's part of a national effort called the Carbon Negative Earthshot: Being able to remove carbon at $100 a ton at a scale of a million tons per year. That's a difficult task, Wade says, but it's not an insurmountable one.

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The Baltic Sea is considered one of the world's most polluted seas. Now, new research from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, reveals a relatively unknown environmental culprit.

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Researchers have discovered that an 80 year old historic World War II shipwreck is still influencing the microbiology and geochemistry of the ocean floor where it rests.

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A new analysis led by researchers with the University of California has found the 2020 wildfires in the state, the most disastrous wildfire year on record, put twice as much greenhouse gas emissions into the Earth’s atmosphere as the total reduction in such pollutants in California between 2003-2019.

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The Presidential Symposium at the American Neurological Association’s 2022 Annual Meeting (ANA2022) in Chicago will shine a spotlight on the role of environmental exposures — air pollution, pesticides, microplastics, and more — in diseases like dementias and developmental disorders.

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Modern agriculture uses a lot of plastic, especially in the form of mulch film that farmers use to cover field soils. This keeps the soils moist for crops, suppresses weeds and promotes crop growth.

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Flinders University materials researchers and pioneering German biomaterials developer one • fıve are using seaweed extracts to develop next-generation biopolymer coating materials that could solve packaging waste dilemmas for the fast-food industry.

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Obesity has been a major global health issue in recent decades as more people eat unhealthy diets and fail to exercise regularly.

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The plastic, made from a chemical found in the extract of a vanilla bean, degrades when exposed to a specific wavelength of light

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World-renowned scholars and researchers engaged in interdisciplinary dialogue on the challenges and prospects of next-generation energy development and applications at the HK Tech Forum on Carbon Neutrality and Sustainable Environment, hosted by Hong Kong Institute for Clean Energy and Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) from 5 to 8 October.

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Symposium will present information that will inform decision makers to support safe urban food production, treatment of urban pollutants, protection of water resources, improvement of environmental health, and human well-being

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India has among the highest levels of air pollution in the world, and nearly every Indian lives in areas with fine particulate matter levels well above PM2.5 — the level considered safe by the World Health Organization (WHO).

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The loss of coral reefs is a serious threat to the health of marine ecosystems around the world.

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Irvine, Calif., Oct. 11, 2022 – As Californians work toward a publicly stated goal of carbon neutrality by 2045, residents of the Golden State stand to reap such additional benefits as cleaner air, widespread improvements in public health and related cost savings, according to researchers at the University of California, Irvine.

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Understanding the fundamentals of these emerging technologies will help design improved systems for chemical recycling and upcycling of waste plastics.

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The Salton Sea, California’s most polluted inland lake, has lost a third of its water in the last 25 years. New research has determined a decline in Colorado River flow is the reason for that shrinking.

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New technology developed at the University of Waterloo could make a significant difference in the fight against climate change by affordably converting harmful carbon dioxide (CO2) into fuels and other valuable chemicals on an industrial scale.

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Scientists are ringing alarm bells about a significant new threat to U.S. water quality: as winters warm due to climate change, they are unleashing large amounts of nutrient pollution into lakes, rivers, and streams. The first-of-its-kind national study finds that previously frozen winter nutrient pollution—unlocked by rising winter temperatures and rainfall—is putting water quality at risk in 40% of the contiguous U.S., including over 40 states.

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Researchers from Nagoya University in Japan have reported that nitrate accumulated in soil bordering streams plays an important role in the increase of nitrate levels in stream water when it rains.

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Tiny amounts of crude oil on the water surface, less than one percent of the thickness of a hair, can damage seabird feathers, a University College Cork (UCC) study finds.

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Particle radioactivity, a characteristic of air pollution that reflects the colorless, odorless gas radon found in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution, enhances PM2.5 toxicity and increases risk of death from cardiovascular disease, especially from heart attack or stroke, according to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open access, peer-reviewed journal of the American Heart Association.

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A new study in New Mexico’s San Juan Basin will boost efforts to identify and reduce methane emissions, a key element of the Global Methane Pledge. The research team found that using multiple methods to measure the ratio of ethane to methane in the ambient air around fossil energy development regions can be used to attribute emissions to specific polluters.

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An analysis of sediments from five North Carolina lakes near coal-burning power plants has found that coal ash pollution of surface waters has been more persistent and widespread than was previously known.

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The latest dinosaur discoveries in the Dinosaurs channel on Newswise.

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RUDN agronomists have studied the microbial community of water and soil in the Arctic. In recent years, this region has been increasingly polluted with oil products. Some of the detected microorganisms are able to “digest” oil hydrocarbons that are dangerous for the environment. Perhaps in the future they will help clean up the region.

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Air pollution has been widely associated with an increased risk of stroke. A new study looks at the role of air pollution on the trajectory of stroke, including cardiovascular events after first stroke and death. The study is published in the September 28, 2022, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Laughing gas is no laughing matter — nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas with 300 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. Scientists are racing to learn whether microorganisms send more of it into the atmosphere after wildfires.

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RUDN University agronomists compared the effect of iron nanoparticles and microparticles for cleaning contaminated soils. It turned out that more modern nanoparticles are in no way superior to more familiar microparticles.

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The Clean Water Act Symposium features discussions about the effect of climate change on water and pollution and the premier screening of film Upstream, Downriver. The event organized by American University’s Center for Environmental Policy and Center for Environmental Filmmaking, in partnership with American Rivers and the Clean Water for All Coalition, will bring together national and international environmental experts to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Clean Water Act. The film tells the story of the Clean Water Act and its value to the nation.

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Seeking solutions to counteract a rapid rise in plastic trash, scientists at UC San Diego have developed biodegradable material that is designed to replace conventionally used plastic. In a new study, an interdisciplinary team of researchers has shown that the material biodegrades in seawater.

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Chula Faculty of Science has developed bioproducts to clean up oil spills in the ocean from their research on oil-eating microbes while getting ready to expand to industrial-scale production for ecological sustainability.

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Researchers in the West Virginia University School of Medicine are using a customized stove in the University's Inhalation Facility to safely examine the harm that burn pit exposure can do. The stove burns pellets the School of Forestry has made to resemble the composition of burn pits at Iraq’s busiest military bases.

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Dr. Abhijit Gosavi’s dream of solving air pollution began when he was a boy in India. It was the 1980s, and Gosavi, who had suffered from asthma since birth, recalls gazing out the window across a hazy mirage crowded with filth-spewing factory chimneys.

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Pittsburgh’s steel industry may be largely in the past, but its legacy lives on in city soils. New research led by Pitt geologists shows how historical coking and smelting dropped toxic metals in Pittsburgh’s soil, particularly in the eastern half of the city. With samples from 56 parks, cemeteries and other sites around the city collected by Carnegie Mellon University students and Jonathan Burgess from the Allegheny County Conservation District, the team was able to pinpoint some of those polluting factors. They recently published their results in the journal Environmental Research Communications.

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In a recent article in the scientific journal “The Innovation," the University of Delaware's Wei-Jun Cai suggests a new approach to treating sewage: applying alkaline materials to sewage discharged from wastewater treatment plants to help sequester CO2 and stop it from reaching the atmosphere.

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Smoke from a Siberian wildfire may have transported enough nitrogen to parts of the Arctic Ocean to amplify a phytoplankton bloom. The work sheds light on some potential ecological effects from Northern Hemisphere wildfires, particularly as these fires become larger, longer and more intense.

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A new method has been developed for identifying and prioritising research activities related to maritime safety and security issues for the Arctic and the North-Atlantic (ANA) region.

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Teens’ hearts may skip a beat within two hours after air pollution exposure, according to a study in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

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Mary Lusk, a UF/IFAS assistant professor of soil, water, and ecosystem sciences, wrote a new article for the journal Lancet Planetary Health in which she connects climate change with septic systems.