Home/Posts Tagged ‘Pollution’
Posts Tagged ‘Pollution’
Nature, Pollution, Science & Technology, Sustainable living, Weird & Wonderful, Wildlife & Flora, Jan 23rd, 2012,
Dutch architect Koen Olthuis, from Waterstudio.NL, hit on the idea of how to create more green areas in cities, which could become habitats for wildlife and to have a positive affect on improving air quality in a metropolis. He created a “Tree Sea”, which can be placed in a river, lake or at maritime coasts, informs The Dailymail. The construction resembles the design of a drilling rig. In Olthuis’ opinion, their building could be sponsored by large oil companies, so they can express their concern for the environment. “What is beautiful about this project, is that it doesn’t demand expensive…
Tags: floating tree, Pollution, The Netherlands, Tree Sea
Politics, Pollution, Nov 14th, 2011,
The ‘Greenest government ever’ strikes again. According to official figures pollution contributed to some 200,000 premature deaths in the UK in 2008, a number with disproportionate victims in poor, urban communities. Furthermore, health care costs total £20bn per year for pollution-related ailments. And now the UK’s Conservative-led government wants to relax air quality standards and shift responsibility from national to local authorities. Standard Tory stuff, right? From the Independent: Poor air quality is caused by three main pollutants – nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and ozone. The UK is failing to meet EU limits for both nitrogen dioxide and PM. A…
Tags: air, government, Pollution, UK
Nature, Pollution, Science & Technology, Sustainable living, Videos & Documentaries, Wildlife & Flora, Oct 22nd, 2011,
Abraham Ramonwana, head guide at Tuli Safari Lodge says: “if a mine develops in South Africa, it’s also going to affect Botswana and Zimbabwe”. The authorisation given to an Australian company called Coal of Africa Limited (CoAL) to construct an open-cast coal mine, called the Vele Colliery, just outside of the boundaries of the Mapungubwe National Park will affect this fragile natural harmony. To Abraham, “mining and industry is a short term plan, tourism is a long-term plan.” Abraham, like many others, believes that the Mapungubwe region should be preserved and protected from the impacts of infrastructural development, and allowed…
Tags: Abraham Ramonwana, coal, coal mining, Coal of Africa Limited, manungubwe, Pollution, South Africa
Health, Politics, Pollution, Sep 5th, 2011,
Smog kills. This is a well-established scientific fact. Unhealthy ground ozone levels contribute to and exasperate allergies and asthma. Cities like London, England and Los Angeles, California are particularly bad places to live in terms of air quality. London has the worst air quality in the UK, while Los Angeles – according to the American Lung Association – is the smoggiest region in the US. US President Barack Obama’s administration looked as if they would tighten controls on ozone levels in the country, but another compromise – aka bow to big business interests – seems to have put an end…
Tags: EPA, Los Angeles. London, lung, Obama, Pollution, Smog
Climate & Change, Health, Videos & Documentaries, Aug 5th, 2011,
Maps using data on ozone pollution, ragweed and “extreme heat days” in the United States show California to be an especially vulnerable place. The number of unhealthy days in Los Angeles, in particular, is expected to rise in the coming years due to a combination of rising temperatures from climate change, droughts, flooding and pollution. Research shows that rising temperatures can worsen the negative health impacts of pollution and ragweed on respiratory illnesses such as asthma. Los Angeles has smog and ragweed pollen problems and is at risk for at least one unhealthy air quality day per summer, meaning the air…
Tags: California, climate change, Health, heat, Los Angeles, Pollution, Smog
Health, Politics, Pollution, Jul 25th, 2011,
New York City’s long-serving mayor Michael Bloomberg has a history of highlighting the “public health” aspects of political issues: tobacco, trans-fats, handguns and now coal. Far from a leftist, the pro-business, social liberal, mega-rich philanthropist and media tycoon is neither George Soros nor Silvio Berlusconi, but he’s got a few things in common with both. Bloomberg, once a Democrat, then a Republican and now an Independent, has come out hard against coal. But his latest move is not a political power play – it’s a charitable donation to the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. A cool $50 million (€35m) charitable…
Tags: Bloomberg, coal, Health, Mayor, New York, NY, Pollution
Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, Jul 19th, 2011,
From London fog to LA smog, citizens groups are up in arms over air quality in the big city. In the 80s Los Angeles was famous for its smog, caused by endless highways choked with the exhaust of millions of cars. Like the Missing Persons song says, “nobody walks in LA”. Apparently everyone has asthma instead. Things have gotten better since the heady 80s and emissions standards have become stricter, but LA is still really smoggy. One study even found that air pollution kills more people in the region than even auto accidents. Los Angeles is the smoggiest region in…
Tags: LA, london, Los Angeles, Pollution, Smog
Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, Jul 13th, 2011,
Nike, Abercrombie & Fitch, Adidas, Puma, Calvin Klein, Converse, Cortefiel, H&M and Lacoste are among the global megabrands named in a new Greenpeace report on hazardous river pollution by the garment industry in China. Since 1995 China has been the world’s largest exporter of textiles, attracting Western and Japanese brands to manufacture there due to cheap labor and lax regulations. Even when major international brands have self-imposed regulations on how their garments are produced, such rules are harder to monitor when outsourced to firms in other countries. Youngor Group, the Chinese company linked to the international firms, uses chemical dyes…
Tags: Adidas, brands, China, Converse, garment, Greenpeace, H&M, Nike, Pollution, Puma, river, textiles
Pollution, Jul 11th, 2011,
The world’s beaches are covered in filth. Not to sound alarmist – or heaven forbid, put someone off their well-deserved beach holiday – but reports from around the globe (or glob) show that beaches everywhere are in an increasingly dire state. We’ve already found out that our oceans are facing ‘catastrophic’ conditions, but that shouldn’t spoil a bit of fun, sun, surf and sand, should it? Problem is, many of those beaches we associate with a nice day out in Mother Nature’s splendor are awash with chemicals and human waste (shit). Look what the LA Times has to say about…
Tags: beaches, California, filth, Guernsey, Pollution, staph, waste
Climate & Change, Wildlife & Flora, Jun 13th, 2011,
I have seen the future and it stings. Climate change, overfishing and agricultural runoff are all possible factors in the rise of jellyfish populations in seas around the globe. Jellyfish invasions such as those experienced by Spain last summer are actually population booms and/or mass migrations attributed to warmer waters, a reduction of predators and an increase of oceanic pollution from organic fertilizers. Besides wreaking havoc on Spain’s beaches, jellyfish have been blamed for wiping out salmon stocks in Northern Ireland and disrupting the running of coastal power and desalination plants in Africa, the Middle East and Japan. New research,…
Tags: acidic, carbon, carbon dioxide, climate change, jellyfish, laser, oceans, Pollution, population
Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, May 20th, 2011,
As the Philippines moves forward in cleaner energy production and away from power sourced from oil and coal, the streets of its capital city, Manila, are choked with emissions from diesel and petrol-burning vehicles. According to the Global Energy Network Institute (GENI) recent years have seen the Philippines experience a sharp rise in the production of energy from hydro and natural gas, and especially from geothermal and other renewable sources. At the same time, power generated from coal and oil peaked and began a somewhat steady decline during the last decade (though figures are only shown up to 2005). What’s…
Tags: coal, electric, energy, jeepney, Manilla, oil, Philippines, Pollution, power
Health, Pollution, Mar 9th, 2011,
Diesel engines and heating systems produce fine particle pollution, which shortens life expectancy in European cities, according to a study by the Aphekom project. The study measured air pollution and human health in 25 cities in Europe, with Bucharest, Romania scoring worst and Stockholm Sweden as cleanest, the latter’s pollution measuring just below targets set by the World Health Organization. The air in Bucharest, on the other hand, is so bad that it is estimated to reduce life expectancy by two years. The study then focused on 10 cities including Barcelona, Brussels and Rome, and, for the first time, took…
Tags: Bucharest, Europe, european cities, Pollution, Romania, Stockholm, study, Sweden
Pollution, Feb 15th, 2011,
An Ecuadoran court has found oil giant Chevron guilty of contaminating the South American country’s Amazon basin. A judge in an Ecuadoran court levied a fine of $8bn (€6bn) against Chevron for deaths, illnesses and monetary losses sustained by the local inhabitants of the rainforest from spills of toxic waste and crude oil. The spills are estimated by a Swedish University study to total 30bn gallons (113bn liters). This amount dwarfs the 205m gallons spilt by BP in the Gulf of Mexico. Though the suit is being touted as a hard fought victory for the indigenous people of Ecuador, the…
Tags: amazon, Chevron, court, Ecuador, Ecuadoran, oil, Pollution, rainforest, spill, TOXIC
Health, Politics, Sustainable living, Nov 4th, 2010,
I’ve wanted to campaign for this for a long time. Restaurant or kids’ meal toys have always bugged me. For, as good as the marketing idea behind them might be, it only makes their existence and popularity all the more absurd. Toys in kids’ meals are a selling trick, and simply nothing more. Restaurant toys are not REAL toys. They are Asian manufactured gadgets of average to low quality, often unfit for toddlers, but equally unfit for any other child, as they are unable to entertain children longer than it takes them to stuff a burger and some fries down…
Tags: carbon footprint, happy meal, happy meal toys, kids' meal toys, mcdonalds, Pollution, Recycling, toys, waste
Climate & Change, Conservation, green living, Health, Nature, Pollution, Recycling, Sustainable living, Weird & Wonderful, Wildlife & Flora, Sep 18th, 2010,
In case you haven’t heard yet, this weekend is Clean Up The World Weekend! What is Clean Up The World Weekend? Simply put, it’s a weekend set aside for people to help clean up our world. More specifically, it’s a weekend for people to get together and clean up all the trash in our world. You can clean up the trash on a city block, in a park, at the beach, in a forest, in a parking lot, or anywhere else you can think of. Once collected, or even while collecting, be sure to separate the recyclables from actual trash….
Tags: clean up the world, Clean Up The World Weekend, climate change, education, event, Go Green, help out, Pollution, trash, tree planting, volunteer, waste
Nature, Pollution, Sep 14th, 2010,
The Tietê River flows through a densely populated region of Brazil of over 33 million inhabitants, including the city of Sao Paulo. While treated drinking water was widely available by the late 1980′s, only 63% of these people had access to sewage collection. This meant that four million people discharged their waste into septic tanks, whose contents overflowed city storm sewers and contaminated the water supply. Since the city is so close to the Tietê’s headwaters, this sewage concentrated, mixing with the existing pollution and causing floating foams and strong odours in many parts of the river. Public outcry over the…
Tags: Pollution, river, sewage, Tietê, water
Business, Politics, Pollution, Uncategorized, Sep 7th, 2010,
The European Union (EU) established the REACH system (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals) and the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) an integrated system for Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals and establishing a European agency for these products. This system requires companies that manufacture and import chemicals to assess the risks arising from their use and take the necessary measures to manage any risk to be identified. The burden of proof with regard to the safety of chemicals manufactured or sold is on the industry. The regulation aims to ensure a high level of protection of human health…
Tags: alogen, bfr, environment, Europe, government, Pollution, research, TOXIC
Climate & Change, climate change, Pollution, Sep 5th, 2010,
The circulation of groundwater in Rome is being threatened by great transformations in natural physiographic systems completely upset by great peripheral urban settlements. Rome is supplied by springs located several hundred km’s from the city. Local sources contribute marginally to the supply, such as the Acqua Vergine Spring and some other mineral water springs. The groundwater quality is consistently damaged by extensive urban development, characterised by large new districts developed without respect to regulations (average dimension of thousands of inhabitants), and by the excessive quantity of wells connecting upper water tables that are often polluted with the deep water tables,…
Tags: climate change, environment, Pollution, river, Rome, tiber, water
Conservation, Politics, Pollution, Sep 3rd, 2010,
The massive leak in the Gulf of Mexico may have been stopped, but oil still continues to spread and flow. Scientists, local communities and businesses wait for the true toll of damage to be revealed as the rest of the world turns its attentions elsewhere. Environmentalists desperately try to prevent the fossil fuel industry from destroying another pristine environment in the icy Arctic, but the thirst for oil is strong and the geopolitics surrounding it complex. Yet there is another place where a devastating spill is continually taking place, poisoning lush ecosystems while destroying livelihoods and lives. In Nigeria’s Niger…
Tags: criminal, delta, Niger, Nigeria, Nigerian, Ogoniland, oil, Pollution, Shell, spills, UNEP
Health, Pollution, Science & Technology, Sep 2nd, 2010,
We disinfect everything all the time and not always wisely. While many of us are naturally immune against these invisible enemies, aka bacteria, others are born with a deficient immune system that does not allow them to live outside of a sterile room. For them, the battle against germs is a daily struggle as they are unable to produce enough white blood cells. The only treatment available today is still bone marrow donation, but not everyone has the possibility of finding a compatible donor. For this reason, at the Necker Hospital, researchers are trying new ways. One innovative treatment is gene…
Tags: bacteria, contamination, enemy, gene, immune, invisible, Pollution, Therapy
