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New study suggests reported PAH emissions in oil sands region greatly underestimated

« New study suggests reported PAH emissions in oil sands region greatly underestimated Results from a new modeling assessment of contamination in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region (AOSR) suggest that officially reported emissions of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in that region have been greatly underestimated. The study, which was carried out by University of Toronto Scarborough Environmental Chemistry professor Frank Wania and his PhD candidate Abha Parajulee, is published as an open access paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science . We sought to use a dynamic multimedia environmental fate model to reconcile the emissions and residue levels reported for three representative PAHs in the AOSR. Data describing emissions to air compiled from two […]

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The globalization of pollution

THE NEXT time you’re in Los Angeles, take a deep breath. A significant portion of the pollution you’ll breathe into your lungs came from across the Pacific Ocean. Decades ago, Angelenos’ respiratory tracts may have been burned by the accumulation of local pollutants in and around Southern California’s valleys and basins. Since then, federal and state pollution controls did much to clean up the air. But a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that neither federal nor state authorities can as effectively restrain one pollution source: China. Chinese and American researchers estimated the amount and ultimate destination of smog-forming gases and particulates that Chinese factories pumped out in their production of export goods. Up to a quarter of the sulfate pollution in the western United States wafted over from those factories. Their emissions add a day of substandard air in the Los Angeles area […]

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China’s Premier Li Says Governments Should Use New-Energy Cars

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said governments should take a leading role in promoting alternative energy-powered vehicles, according to a statement posted on the central government’s website yesterday. “New-energy vehicles, especially buses, can help improve urban problems of pollution and noise and therefore everyone should be encouraged to use it,” Li was cited as saying during a visit to a unit of automaker BYD Co. (1211) yesterday in the northern Chinese city of Xi’an. China plans to have 5 million alternative energy-powered automobiles by 2020. Li’s comments reiterate a policy to have local public authorities take the lead in using alternative-energy vehicles. China’s provinces and biggest cities have been given targets to cut concentrations of some air pollutants by 5 percent to 25 percent by 2017 compared with 2012 levels. An increasing number of Chinese cities have introduced emergency measures to fight smog. BYD Co., backed by Warren Buffett ’s […]

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Chicago pollution board rules against new limits on petcoke

Chicago environmentalists are reeling after an Illinois government panel rejected proposed rules to regulate piles of petroleum coke along Chicago’s shipping channels, which nearby residents and activists say can cause environmental and health problems. Gov. Pat Quinn and Illinois’ Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had filed a request with the Illinois Pollution Control Board to craft emergency rules to regulate the piles of petroleum coke, also known as petcoke. Petcoke is a powder-like byproduct of crude oil production that’s often shipped overseas for use in energy production or in concrete or brick construction. Residents of Chicago’s southeast, where the petcoke is located, have been petitioning the government for years to do something about the piles, which they say blanket their neighborhood with noxious dust on windy days. Their complaints gained attention from city and state officials in August, after petcoke was documented by residents blowing into a neighborhood and park. […]

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Study: Pollution from Chinese factories is harming air quality on U.S. West Coast

Bad air from China is blowing across the Pacific Ocean and contributing to smog in the United States, according to new scientific research. And much of that air pollution is being caused by the manufacture of goods in China for export to the United States and Europe. “We’ve outsourced our manufacturing and much of our pollution, but some of it is blowing back across the Pacific to haunt us,” said Steve Davis, a University of California at Irvine scientist and a co-author of the study. “Given the complaints about how Chinese pollution is corrupting other countries’ air, this paper shows that there may be plenty of blame to go around.” The paper was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday and, according to its researchers, is the first to quantify how much of the pollution reaching the West Coast of the United […]

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Shanghai considers arming residents with anti-pollution masks

P It was not immediately clear if the proposals would see authorities give masks to all of the city’s more than 23 million residents. Mr Zhu said children, traffic police and those who worked outdoors should be given priority. The masks would be distributed through the city’s health care system, the Xinmin Evening News reported. The report came as Yang Xiong, Shanghai’s mayor, told an annual summit of Communist Party leaders and advisers that his city needed to “break away from the conventional path of development.” “Environmental capacity is strained and air pollution such as haze has become a pronounced problem,” Mr Yang told Shanghai’s People’s Congress on Sunday. Mr Yang vowed to “pay more attention to the atmospheric environment” although on Tuesday the Shanghai Daily newspaper said the city’s investment in environmental protection […]

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China Focus: Air pollution chokes as smog migrates

People living in south China have been grumbling about gales blowing smog in from the north, as hazardous air chokes more parts of the country this winter. In 2013, China’s smog belt stretched from the developed regions of the Yangtze and Zhujiang river deltas and areas around Beijing and Tianjin, to other places where smog was seldom seen. The southernmost province of Hainan and autonomous region of Tibet recorded smoggy days. Chinese Academy of Sciences issued a report last month about climate change, saying that besides local pollutants, "smog migration" was another serious problem. In Beijing, 30 percent to 40 percent of the PM 2.5, airborne particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, was caused by emissions, 20 percent to 30 percent from chemical conversion in the atmosphere, and the rest from smog movement, according to the report. Meanwhile, according to statistics published monthly […]

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China Exports Pollution to U.S., Study Finds

A group of researchers found that trans-Pacific air pollution is a hidden price of the goods sent abroad from China. European Pressphoto Agency BEIJING — Filthy emissions from China’s export industries are carried across the Pacific Ocean and contribute to air pollution in the Western United States, according to a paper published Monday by a prominent American science journal. The research is the first to quantify how air pollution in the United States is affected by China’s production of goods for export and by global consumer demand for those goods, the study’s authors say. It was written by nine scholars based in three nations and was published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , which last year published a paper by other researchers that found a drop in life spans in northern China because of air pollution. The latest paper explores the […]

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Thousands of Gas Leaks Discovered Under Streets

Researchers from Duke revealed today that they had discovered nearly 5,900 gas leaks under the streets of Washington DC , including 12 that posed a serious risk of explosion. And it’s not just Washington: a gas industry whistleblower who is part of the team showed this was happening in cities all over America .” New research today says the nation’s capital, notorious for leaking state secrets, has thousands of leaks of another sort: methane from natural gas pipelines. More than 5,800 leaks from aging pipelines were found under Washington, D.C.’s streets by scientists from Duke University and Boston University, who dispatched a car equipped with measuring instruments across the city last January and February. Their findings appear in this week’s peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology. The researchers found 19 of the leaks had high concentrations of methane, a potent heat-trapping greenhouse gas […]

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China's most-polluted province faces enormous challenge

Hebei, a northern region with the worst air in China, faces an enormous challenge in cleaning up its dirty air as data showed that little more than one third of all days last year met quality standards. The air quality index (AQI) in 129 days, 35.3 percent of days in 2013, was below 100, Chen Guoying, director of the Hebei provincial bureau of environmental protection, told a local legislature on Wednesday. The province, which surrounds the national capital Beijing, had 80 days, or 21.9 percent, of severe air pollution (AQI readings higher than 200), Chen said. According to statistics published monthly by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Hebei is home to up to seven of the country’s top 10 polluted cities. "Heavy smog hit at the time of the "two sessions" in 2013 and again this year," said Liu Ronghua, a local political advisor, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple