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Beijing Makes Changes To Fight Air Pollution

Posted by plantitfilm on Sunday, 25 November 2012 in Air Quality

For decades, air pollution has threatened the health of people in Beijing. Brown smog hangs over the city. The sun, when you can see it, is tinged a rusty brown, like looking at a flashlight through a piece of paper. City-dwellers wear surgical masks to protect their lungs from the pollutants and ot...

Is the EPA Doing Enough to Protect Your Air?

Posted by amir on Sunday, 25 November 2012 in Air Quality

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the Clean Air Act (CAA) prevented the premature loss of 160,000 American lives per year in 2010. By 2020 this number is expected to rise to 230,000. This makes the Act one of the most important public health measures ever enacted. Where do these num...

Is The Air Outside Your Childs School Toxic?

Posted by Wolf on Thursday, 11 October 2012 in Air Quality

"There is work to be done still on air quality," EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says. "The best result would be to find that all of our concerns were overblown, but we're not finding this in every case." Most of the air monitoring completed so far has not found dangerous levels of pollution, the EP...

California Air Pollution

Posted by acox on Wednesday, 03 October 2012 in Air Quality

About 17 million Americans live in areas afflicted by all three air pollution hazards. This worries scientists since research suggests air pollution threatens human health — and not just the lungs. On days in which smog levels spike, there's an increase in hospital admissions for respira...

Laundry additive helps bust pollution

Posted by thatsenough on Friday, 28 September 2012 in Air Quality

Soon, we could all be wearing clothes that purify the air as we simply move around in them.Plans are now proceeding to commercialize a new liquid laundry additive called CatClo, which contains microscopic pollution-eating particles.The new additive is the result of collaboration between the Universi...

Tracking European Air Quality

Posted by amir on Wednesday, 26 September 2012 in Air Quality

The largest and most comprehensive effort to research air pollution in Britain is underway in London and the skies above it. As many as 80 scientists from eleven universities are tracking nearly 1,000 different types of gases and particles in the atmosphere. Pollutants are being ...

Europe Air Quality Causing Shorter Lives

Posted by acox on Wednesday, 26 September 2012 in Air Quality

* Particles, ozone are Europe's biggest air problems* Eastern Europe, Mediterranean nations worst affected* EU to review air quality laws, WHO standards much tougher* Sulphur dioxide levels have fallenBy Barbara LewisBRUSSELS, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Microscopic particles, among the most har...

You Can Literally Hear What Pollution Sounds Like

Posted by bchristo on Thursday, 13 September 2012 in Air Quality

In the flat lands of California's Central Valley, oil pumps obscured by waving lines of fuel-richened air dip and rise on the horizon. Two hundred miles to the north and west, aging eighteen-wheelers pound through an urban bypass tunnel, staining the walls black with diesel fumes. Farther to the nor...

EPA's encroachment of power

Posted by amir on Wednesday, 04 April 2012 in Air Quality

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a pronouncement in December 2009 to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. It claimed it was using the authority provided it from the Clean Air Act and the May 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling inMassachusetts v. EPA that "greenhouse gases in the atmosph...

Two-thirds of China’s cities fail on air standards

Posted by bensor on Sunday, 11 March 2012 in Air Quality

Two-thirds of China’s cities currently fail to meet stricter air quality standards that the government wants to phase in over four years to combat notoriously smoggy skies, a senior Chinese environmental official said Friday. The State Council, China’s Cabinet, on Wednesday issued new lim...

Air Pollution: Bad For Health, But Good For Planet?

Posted by plantitfilm on Saturday, 12 November 2011 in Air Quality

Cleaning up the air, while good for our lungs, could make global warming worse. That conclusion is underscored by a new study, which looks at the pollutants that go up smokestacks along with carbon dioxide. These pollutants are called aerosols and they include soot as well as compounds of...

Air pollution making children sick

Posted by Cathym on Tuesday, 27 September 2011 in Air Quality

I installed solar panels on my roof in September. I made my decision after my monthly energy bill hit an all-time high, and then exceeded it the next month. But perhaps my most compelling reason to go solar is the least intuitive: I want to help stamp out asthma. As a hospital-based pediatrician at...

White House Rejects EPA Proposal to Strengthen Smog Standards

Posted by Wolf on Wednesday, 07 September 2011 in Air Quality

On Friday, September 2, 2011, the White House directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to withdraw and reconsider a proposal to strengthen National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for ground-level ozone, the primary ingredient in smog. The announcement marked the first time that the ...

How Dirty Is The Yellow School Bus?

Posted by lillianbarbeito on Friday, 08 July 2011 in Air Quality

Air Pollution: Tailpipe controls on buses don't clear the air inside bus cabins As iconic yellow buses transport children to and from school, their diesel engines deliver big doses of air pollutants. In response, school districts have started retrofitting their buses to cut tailpipe emissions. But ...

Well done UK Govt: Committing to an ambitious carbon budget

Posted by ep-admin on Tuesday, 17 May 2011 in Air Quality

by Greg Lavery, Ph.D. Yesterday (17 May) the UK government committed to a 50% reduction on 1990 greenhouse gas emission levels by 2025. This is very good for the development of the UK’s green economy and honours the recommendations of the Independent Committee on Climate Change. It represents anoth...

Tough Rules Have Made Our Air Cleaner

Posted by henryfool on Thursday, 12 May 2011 in Air Quality

May ushered in smog season and metro Atlanta had its first code orange alert Monday. We’ve made tremendous progress improving our air quality, but serious challenges remain, particularly with respect to elevated ozone levels. Since the passage of the Clean Air Act amendments in 1970, emissi...

Kansas Blames EPA for Bad Air Quality

Posted by ep-admin on Thursday, 24 March 2011 in Air Quality

March 24, 2011 The Kansas House has approved a resolution saying the Environmental Protection Agency air-quality regulations are hurting the national economy. The resolution approved Wednesday urges Congress to stop funding EPA's air-quality work and to stop the agency from regulatinggreenhouse g...

EPA's New Proposal for Four Corners Power Plant Cuts More NOx Emissions

Posted by ep-admin on Monday, 14 February 2011 in Air Quality

Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a supplemental proposal to reduce emissions from the Four Corners Power Plant. The new proposal will reduce nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions from approximately 45,000 tons per year to 5,800 tons per year, 3,200 tons less than EPA’s initial pro...

Clean Air Act Under Attack by your Government

Posted by ep-admin on Wednesday, 09 February 2011 in Air Quality

Congressional Republicans are vowing to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from using the Clean Air Act to control pollution that contributes to global warming, underscoring the threat with a proposed deep cut to the agency's budget. Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., chair of a House subco...

Dirtying the Clean Air Act

Posted by davebishop on Tuesday, 08 February 2011 in Air Quality

The following editorial appeared in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, Feb. 6: Conservatives have been attacking the Clean Air Act since its passage in 1970, continually claiming that federal efforts to fight air pollution would wreak economic ruin. As congressional Republicans prepare to...