How air pollution creates larger and longer lasting storm clouds has been a topic of intense debate in climatology circles. Now, a new investigation that finally reveals the atmospheric mechanism at work also shows how pollution plays into climate warming. Previously, scientists had thought that pollution causes larger and longer-lasting storm clouds by making thunderheads […]
Songbirds are exhibiting inconsistency in their songs and pollution appears to be the culprit, say Cornell University ornithologists working in a region with high levels of PCB contaminants. The article, published in the journal PLOS ONE, is based on observations from the Hudson River valley, a region with legacy levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) as […]
The morning shower or soak in the tub are significant sources of the hormones, antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals that pollute the environment, say scientists at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. In the past, scientists and pollution control officials assumed that toilets were the main pharma polluting culprit, with active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) […]
A new study of pollution-filled “brown clouds” over south Asia has found that they enhance solar heating of the lower atmosphere by about 50 percent. The researchers, from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, say the combined heating effect of greenhouse gases and the brown clouds, which contain soot, trace metals and other particles, is enough […]
Ethanol advocates say that it’s a clean-burning fuel that is friendly to the environment. But a study by Stanford scientists found that if all US vehicles ran on ethanol, the number of respiratory-related deaths and hospitalizations would likely increase. “Our results show that a high blend of ethanol poses an equal or greater risk to […]
Mother Nature herself may be implicated in a worrying rise in levels of DDT and mercury in otherwise pristine Canadian ecosystems. A new study suggests that the culprits are seabirds that transport and deliver the contaminants in their poo. Surprisingly, the researchers found that the seabirds were responsible for transporting most of the human-made contaminants […]
Street specific air pollution warnings will soon be available via text-messages in a pioneering project being tested in Central London and the Borough of Croydon. The European Space Agency (ESA) backed prototype service will initially warn around a thousand asthma sufferers prior to an elevation in air pollution, with additional patients to follow. Like other […]
University of California and Purdue University researchers believe that naturally-occurring atmospheric chemicals reacting with sunlight are breaking down smog and other pollutants at a faster rate than once believed. Researchers Amitabha Sinha, Jamie Matthews and Joseph Francisco used sensitive laser techniques to study natural air cleaners called OH radicals. Their research, appearing in theProceedings of […]
