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Less traffic on the roads during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the UK led to a reduction in air pollution but may have caused potentially damaging surface ozone levels to rise, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of York. The problem is being created by the change in chemistry between NO x and O 3.
In early 2013, the Chinese government declared a war on air pollution and began instituting stringent policies to regulate the emissions of PM 2.5. pollution is falling, harmful ground-level ozonepollution is on the rise, especially in large cities. Over the course of five years, PM 2.5 But the rapid reduction of PM 2.5
Levels of two major air pollutants have been reduced significantly since lockdowns began in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but a secondary pollutant—ground-level ozone—has increased in China, according to new research. Ozone is harmful to humans at ground-level, causing pulmonary and heart disease.
The rapidly growing space industry may have a greater climate effect than the aviation industry and undo repair to the protective ozone layer if left unregulated, according to a new study led by UCL and published in the journal Earth’s Future as an open-access paper. —Ryan et al. —Ryan et al.
A study by a pair of researchers at Northwestern University found that when fuel prices drove residents of São Paulo, Brazil, to switch from ethanol to gasoline in their flexible-fuel vehicles, local ozone levels dropped 20%. Ozone levels are relatively high in São Paulo, with hourly concentrations above 75 and 125 µg m ?3
Ozone levels across much of North America and Europe dropped significantly between 2000 and 2014. People living in parts of southern Europe, South Korea and southern Japan and China also experienced more than 15 days a year of ozone levels above 70 ppb. Trends in daily maximum ozone levels (known as 4MDA8) at urban and non-urban sites.
Average annual percentage of black carbon pollution related to Chinese exports. China is responsible for only a small percentage of the annual pollution in the US, but powerful global winds known as “westerlies” can push airborne chemicals across the ocean in days, particularly during the spring, causing dangerous spikes in contaminants.
Large improvements of air quality in China during the lockdown have been widely reported, but new research shows that two pollutants harmful to human health—fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) and ozone—were only slightly reduced. and ozone were only slightly reduced or barely affected.
Ozone, the main component of smog, is a plant-damaging pollutant formed by emissions from vehicles, cooking stoves and other sources. New research shows that ozonepollution damaged millions of tons of wheat, rice, soybean and cotton crops in India in 2005. Smog in India. Credit: Mark Danielson/Flickr.
US EPA Region 9 8-hour ozone trends, 1979-2000. These State Implementation Plans (SIPs) are the roadmaps to meeting the 1997 8-hour ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) of 0.08 In 1997, EPA first established the 8-hour ozone standard, which replaced the older 1-hour ozone standard (0.12 Source: EPA.
In a cohort study of a subset of 2050 newborns from the Children’s Health Study in southern California, researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) found that an increase of 2 standard deviations in prenatal exposure to particulate matter in air pollution was associated with higher newborn total thyroxine (TT4) measures.
Researchers from Rice University and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report in a paper in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry that particularly in Northeastern cities, ozone levels dropped even beyond what was anticipated by cutting emissions of NO x from 2002 to 2006. —Daniel Cohan, co-author. Earlier post.).
A University of Utah engineer has developed an inexpensive new method to remove oil sheen by repeatedly pressurizing and depressurizing ozone gas, creating microscopic bubbles that attack the oil so it can be removed by sand filters. Emerging contaminants, such as wastewater polluted with medications and personal care products.
The Asian monsoon circulation provides an effective pathway for pollution from Asia, India, and Indonesia to enter the global stratosphere, according to a new international study led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. NCAR scientist William Randel, the lead author.
The US Environmental Protection Agency announced that it is proposing to find that the San Joaquin Valley, and California’s South Coast and the Southeast Desert have failed to meet the 1-hour ozone standard by their required deadlines. Children and the elderly are most impacted by ozonepollution.
The approximate linear relationship for each region is notable, suggesting that the dependence of urban NO 2 pollution upon population follows a power law scaling with population. Even though larger cities are typically more energy efficient with lower per-capita emissions, more people still translates to more pollution.)
Black carbon and tropospheric ozone are harmful air pollutants that also contribute to climate change. Reducing black carbon and tropospheric ozone now will slow the rate of climate change within the first half of this century, the study said. Full implementation of these measures would reduce future global warming by 0.5 °C
A new statistical method developed by researchers at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia) can detect abnormal ozone levels within large bodies of monitored data. The monitoring methods can quickly and accurately detect ozone anomalies—localized spikes in ozone concentration indicated by sensor data.
Illustration of projected ozone changes in the South Coast region due to climate change in 2050. Areas in orange and red could see ozone concentrations elevated by 9 to 18 parts per billion. Our study reveals that climate change and regional air pollution are intertwined problems. Click to enlarge.
The results, published in an open-access paper in the journal Science , suggest that the focus of efforts to mitigate ozone formation and toxic chemical burdens need to be adjusted, the authors suggested. Even so, lotions, paints and other products contribute about as much to air pollution as does the transportation sector.
HFCs are synthetic gases that are used in a variety of applications, but mainly to replace ozone-depleting substances in aerosols, foams, refrigeration and air-conditioning. The California Air Resources Board recently approved first-in-the-nation rules to curb the impact of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants.
The California Air Resources Board (ARB) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are collaborating in the $20-million CalNex research project to examine the nexus between air pollution and climate change. The complex roles that ozone and aerosols play in the atmosphere provide examples of such trade-offs.
Ozonepollution near Earth’s surface is one of the main ingredients of summertime smog. It is also not directly measurable from space due to the abundance of ozone higher in the atmosphere, which obscures measurements of surface ozone. —Jin et al.
Based on their findings in a new study, researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Minnesota suggest that modifying urban form—as a means of affecting motor vehicle usage—may be a strategy to mitigate urban air pollution. Their paper appears in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology.
The EPA has dismissed two panels of outside scientists that advised the agency on particulate matter and ground-level ozone, which have been linked to smog and respiratory problems.
HFCs are powerful greenhouse gases originally developed as substitutes for ozone-depleting chemicals. A binding legal agreement exists that can cut HFCs now—the Montreal Protocol ozone treaty—and many alternatives to HFCs have already been developed and are waiting for the right regulatory incentive from the Montreal Protocol to be deployed.
California’s premier air quality award is named for the late Dr. Arie Haagen-Smit, known as the “father” of air pollution science and control. Haagen-Smit, originally from the Netherlands, was a biochemistry professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena for 16 years before beginning air pollution research in 1948.
Cars, buses, and trucks release pollutants and greenhouse gases that promote warming, while emitting few aerosols that counteract it. The industrial sector releases such a high proportion of sulfates and other cooling aerosols that it actually contributes a significant amount of cooling to the system. Unger et al.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed standards to reduce harmful air pollution from oil and gas drilling operations. The VOC reductions in the proposal are expected to help reduce ozone nonattainment problems in many areas where oil and gas production occurs.
Population-Weighted Multi Pollutant Index (PW-MPI) values for different regions. The emission scenario assumes that population and economic growth largely determine energy and food consumption and consequent pollution sources with the current technologies (“business as usual”). Source: Pozzer et al. —Pozzer et al.
Research teams will also measure concentrations of exhaust pollutants in an attempt to disentangle non-tailpipe and tailpipe pollution, to better understand how each effects human health. HEI receives balanced funding from government and industry. 10 ) of urban air, a fraction known to be enriched with non-tailpipe constituents.
The researchers analyzed pollutant monitoring and pulmonary health effects information as well as multiple covariates that they had collected over more than 20 years from participants in several cohorts recruited into the Children’s Health Study (CHS) in Southern California. HEI typically receives balanced funding from the U.S.
As a result of their findings, published in the 30 October issue of the journal Science , the authors argue that assessments of multigas mitigation policies, as well as any separate efforts to mitigate warming from short-lived pollutants, should include gas-aerosol interactions. Similar reactions influence the creation of nitrate aerosols.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its latest set of proposed standards to reduce emissions of methane and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from the oil and natural gas industry. The proposed updates also add emissions reduction requirements for sources of methane and VOC pollution that were not covered in the 2012 rules.
Scaling of industry sales statistics enabled the discrepancy to be attributed to the use of ancillary solvent products such as screenwash and deicer which are not included in internationally applied vehicle emission methodologies. While some VOCs are released in exhaust, others may arise from an unexpected source—e.g.,
In part it is difficult to identify significant air quality improvements from a specific program—especially one targeted at a small area within a large city—against the backdrop of broader regional pollutant and weather changes. Within the CCZ, the investigators projected a net decline of 1.7 µg/m 3. in PM 10.
For a number of the most important pollutants, levels were substantially lower than required by regulations. They were tested on multiple repeats of these cycles, and measurements of more than 300 regulated and unregulated air pollutants were made in accordance with the highest laboratory standards. Background. g/hp-hr in 2010.
In the first empirical study using satellite measurements to explore the relationship between urban form and air pollution, a team from the University of Minnesota has found that cities with highly contiguous built-up areas have, on average, lower concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 , a key component of urban air pollution).
A new report from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finds that air pollution at US ports can be reduced significantly at all port types and sizes through a variety of strategies and cleaner technologies. national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS). Source: National Port Strategy Assessment. Click to enlarge.
CARB also adopted a new plan to curb destructive “super pollutants” including black carbon, fluorinated gases and methane. The plan, California’s Short-lived Climate Pollutant Reduction Strategy, maps out the route to more rapid greenhouse gas reductions by clamping down on these super pollutants. emissions by more than 20%.
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has posted a revised draft of California’s proposed Short-Lived Climate Pollutant (SLCP) Strategy. SLCPs are a category of pollutants which remain in the atmosphere for a relatively brief period, but have global warming potentials that are much higher than those of CO 2.
When ethane and propane—the most abundant non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHC) in the atmosphere—mix with nitrogen oxides from vehicles and power plants they form tropospheric ozone—a key component of smog and directly linked to increases in mortality. The study used data collected from 20 observatories world-wide.
The data shows a slight increase in overall emissions from the previous year, and a slight decline in emissions from transportation, which is the state’s main source of both GHGs and air pollutants. These programs cover transportation fuels, industrial emissions, vehicle emissions and emissions from electricity generation.
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