Cornwall homeowners ‘could be moved to escape air pollution’

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

Residents in pollution hotspots could be relocated under new clean air proposals.

Cornwall Council is to discuss the plans, which could include compulsory purchases of properties in areas with “particularly poor air quality”, later.

The council admitted the scheme was likely to be “very controversial”, but said it was cheaper than alternative measures.

It said relocation was just one of the options being considered.

As part of the “Clean Air for Cornwall Strategy”, six approaches have been explored, including creating new neighbourhoods in “clean air” zones.

A council spokesperson said there was “no specific area” in mind at present.

However, there are seven Air Quality Management Areas (AQMAs) in Cornwall which fail to meet national air quality objectives.

Truro, Gunnislake, St Austell, Tideford, Bodmin, Camelford and the area of Kerrier – containing Pool, Camborne and Redruth – have all been declared AQMAs since 2005.

All seven areas have been singled out for the pollutant nitrogen dioxide, which is associated with respiratory problems, lung disease and cancer.

‘Anti-idling legislation’

Camelford was given AQMA status in January 2017, after pressure from the Camelford Clean Air Group.

Chairwoman Claire Hewlett said: “If you look at Cornwall Council’s transport strategy, it’s all about people living close to where they work so that they can use active transport.

“To move people to a new town seems to go against that. Surely you want people to stay where they’re working so that they can walk or cycle.”

ClientEarth Healthy Air campaigner Andrea Lee branded the idea “extraordinary”, but said it was important to tackle the sources of air pollution.

One option being considered by the council is “anti-idling legislation” which would see motorists fined £20 for keeping their engines running while idle in places like taxi ranks, train stations and schools.

The council is recommending that legal advice is taken before any decisions are made.

Source: Cornwall homeowners ‘could be moved to escape air pollution’ – BBC News

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Paris tries something different in the fight against smog

Posted on January 30, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

Last week Paris suffered its fourth smog of the winter and tried a new idea to protect its residents from the worst effects. Like many European cities, the Paris region has a well-established system of emergency actions that escalate if smog persists. Initial steps include health warnings, reduced speed limits and restrictions on lorries in the city centre. Final steps include cheaper public (€3.80 for a day pass), and bans on half of cars, using an odd/even number plate system.

Despite gradual long-term improvements in air pollution across Europe, in the last month Oslo and Madrid restricted traffic to protect their residents during smog but there is little evidence on the effectiveness of these schemes. The odd/even car ban during the Paris smog of March 2014 reduced the particle pollution alongside major roads by around 20% in the rush hour, but this was less effective in December 2016 as fewer people left their car at home.

This time, instead of taking half of the cars from the roads, Paris banned the oldest diesels. This was made possible by a new French scheme to label cars according to the pollution that they emit. Electric ones get a green sticker. A petrol car made between 1997 and 2003 gets an orange sticker. The new smog scheme banned the most polluting diesels, those more than 16 years old.

Airparif the Paris pollution network, estimates heating a home for one day with an open fire emits the same particle pollution driving 3,500 km in a typical 2010 diesel car. The city therefore implements a ban on wood burning during smogs.

Source: Paris tries something different in the fight against smog | Environment | The Guardian

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Air Pollution Kills More Than 18 100 in Bulgaria Every Year

Posted on January 30, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

More than 18 100 die as a result of conditions caused by air pollution, public broadcaster BNR has said, citing statistics of The Lancet, a British medical journal.

Plovdiv, Pleven, Pazardzhik, Sofia and Pernik are the five cities most affected, according to the figures.

Fine dust particles are of particular concern, being generated not only from the use of coal and road traffic, but from weather conditions such as fogs and lack of wind.

Vanya Yurukova, an internal medicine and pneumology specialist and member of the the Bulgarian Association on Pulmonary diseases’ managing board, is quoted as saying measures such as anti-pollution masks and scarves can be useful to prevent one from exposure to FDP, but are not helpful enough when high level of particle pollution has been registered.

In October, Sofia was ranked as Europe’s most polluted capital by the European Environment Agency.

Days earlier, World Health Organization data revealed Bulgaria was second in the world by deaths per capita caused by air pollution.

Many of the coronary artery disease cases are nowadays thought to be caused by FDP.

Source: Air Pollution Kills More Than 18 100 in Bulgaria Every Year

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Globe-trotting pollutants raise some cancer risks four times higher than predicted 

Posted on January 28, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

New research has revealed the ways that aerosol droplets can form to transport pollutants long distances, even across oceans. Credit: Graphic courtesy of Oregon State University

A new way of looking at how pollutants ride through the atmosphere has quadrupled the estimate of global lung cancer risk from a pollutant caused by combustion, to a level that is now double the allowable limit recommended by the World Health Organization.

The findings, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition online, showed that tiny floating particles can grow semi-solid around pollutants, allowing them to last longer and travel much farther than what previous global climate models predicted.

Scientists said the new estimates more closely match actual measurements of the pollutants from more than 300 urban and rural settings.

The study was done by scientists at Oregon State University, the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, or PNNL, and Peking University. The research was primarily supported by PNNL.

“We developed and implemented new modeling approaches based on laboratory measurements to include shielding of toxics by organic aerosols, in a global climate model that resulted in large improvements of model predictions,” said PNNL climate scientist and lead author Manish Shrivastava.

“This work brings together theory, lab experiments and field observations to show how viscous organic aerosols can largely elevate global human exposure to toxic particles, by shielding them from chemical degradation in the atmosphere.”

Pollutants from fossil fuel burning, forest fires and biofuel consumption include air-polluting chemicals known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency has identified several PAHs as cancer-causing agents.

But PAHs have been difficult to represent in past climate models. Simulations of their degradation process fail to match the amount of PAH that is actually measured in the environment.

To look more closely at how far PAHs can travel while riding shielded on a viscous aerosol, the researchers compared the new model’s numbers to PAH concentrations actually measured by Oregon State University scientists at the top of Mount Bachelor in the central Oregon Cascade Range.

“Our team found that the predictions with the new shielded models of PAHs came in at concentrations similar to what we measured on the mountain,” said Staci Simonich, a toxicologist and chemist in the College of Agricultural Sciences and College of Science at OSU, and international expert on the transport of PAHs.

“The level of PAHs we measured on Mount Bachelor was four times higher than previous models had predicted, and there’s evidence the aerosols came all the way from the other side of the Pacific Ocean.”

These tiny airborne particles form clouds, cause precipitation and reduce air quality, yet they are the most poorly understood aspect of the climate system.

A smidge of soot at their core, aerosols are tiny balls of gases, pollutants, and other molecules that coalesce around the core. Many of the molecules that coat the core are what’s known as “organics.” They arise from living matter such as vegetation — leaves and branches, for example, or even the molecule responsible for the pine smell that wafts from forests.

Other molecules such as pollutant PAHs also stick to the aerosol. Researchers long thought that PAHs could move freely within the organic coating of an aerosol. This ease of movement allowed the PAH to travel to the surface where ozone — a common chemical in the atmosphere — can break it down.

But scientists’ understanding of aerosols has changed in the last five years or so.

Recent experiments led by PNNL coauthor Alla Zelenyuk show that, depending on the conditions, the aerosol coatings can actually be quite viscous. If the atmosphere is cool and dry, the coating can become as viscous as tar, trapping PAHs and other chemicals. By preventing their movement, the viscous coating shields the PAHs from degradation.

Researchers developed a new way of representing PAHs in a global climate model, and ran it to simulate PAH concentrations from 2008 to 2010. They examined one of the most carcinogenic PAHs in particular, called BaP. Simulations were compared to data from 69 rural sites and 294 urban sites worldwide, and showed that predictions from shielded PAHs were far more accurate than previous, unshielded ones.

Scientists also analyzed how far the protected PAHs could travel, using both old and new models. In all cases, the shielded PAHs traveled across oceans and continents, whereas in the previous version they barely moved from their country of origin.

To look at the impact globe-trotting PAHs might have on human health, Shrivastava combined a global climate model, running either the shielded PAH scenario or the previous unshielded one, with a lifetime cancer risk assessment model developed by coauthors Huizhong Shen and Shu Tao, both then at Peking University.

Globally, the previous model predicted half a cancer death out of every 100,000 people, which is half the limit outlined by the World Health Organization (WHO) for PAH exposure. But using the new model, which showed that shielded PAHs actually travel great distances, the global risk was four times that, or two cancer deaths per 100,000 people, which exceeds WHO standards.

The WHO standards were not exceeded everywhere. It was higher in China and India and lower in the United States and Western Europe. The extent of shielding was also much lower over the tropics compared to the mid- and high-latitudes. As the aerosols traversed the warm and humid tropics, ozone could get access to the PAHs and oxidize them.

“We don’t know what implications more PAH oxidation products over the tropics have for future human or environmental health risk assessments,” said Shrivastava. “We need to better understand how the shielding of PAHs varies with the complexity of aerosol composition, atmospheric chemical aging of aerosols, temperature and relative humidity. I was initially surprised to see so much oxidation over the tropics.”

Source: Globe-trotting pollutants raise some cancer risks four times higher than predicted — ScienceDaily

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What you need to know about air pollution: Its importance and effective solutions

Posted on January 27, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

 Air pollution is now one of the most pressing environmental concerns. While nine out of the ten most polluted cities in the world lie in India and Pakistan that leaves no room for complacency amongst other countries; partly because they too have their own issues and also because we live in a connected ecosystem.

What Is Air Pollution?

Air pollution is a complex topic as so many factors are responsible for the poor quality of our air. However, simply put, air pollution is any chemical, physical or biological change which causes the atmosphere to become dirty and thus risks not only our own potential for survival but also that of other animals and plants.

Air pollution can also be further divided into two distinct categories; visible and invisible. Both can lead to an alteration of the delicate balance of our atmosphere and cause problems to health on a local scale and also damage to the ecosystem globally in terms of depletion of the ozone layer leading to climate change.

Air pollution can arise in two main ways. First, pollutants can be released directly into the atmosphere and are known as primary pollutants. Second, primary pollutants can combine to form secondary pollutants and this can be seen in the formation of issues such as smog.

What Causes Air Pollution?

Fossil Fuels: A main cause of air pollution is the one you might expect, namely the sulphur released from the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and petroleum. We rely on petrol, diesel and jet fuel to transport not only us but our goods around the world as we live in an increasingly globalised economy.  In 2015 alone nearly 3.6 billion passengers, almost half the world’s population, were transported by the world’s airlines.

Vehicle Emissions: As our reliance on cars, trucks, shipping freighters and aeroplanes increases so do the levels of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides released into the atmosphere. 13% of global CO2 emissions, a major factor in global warming, come from transport.

Agriculture: We may not always immediately think of agricultural activities being connected to air pollution but methane and ammonia are both by-products of farming and are highly hazardous to our environment. This is compounded by the use of pesticides, insecticides and fertilizers, a heady cocktail of chemicals, some parts of which make it into the air.

Manufacturing: Heavy industry leads to the release of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and a soup of other chemicals, all of which can lead to a decline in air quality. Oil refineries also release hydrocarbons which pollute the atmosphere.

Deforestation: Deforestation is caused by clearing land for agriculture, manufacturing and ever growing urban areas. This lowers air quality because the fewer trees there are the less carbon dioxide they can absorb.

Mining: The result of mining on the health of workers and nearby residents has been clearly demonstrated over the years and in developing countries the quest to extract as many tons of natural resources as possible is having a devastating impact on the health of those working in the mines.

Indoor Pollution: What we use in our own homes is also leading to air pollution. Household cleaning products, paints and varnishes release chemicals into the air which contribute to poor air quality and many of us add to this chemical mix by smoking.

What Damage Does Air Pollution Do?

Air pollution damages our environment, and it also leads to a variety of health issues and even death.

Circulatory and Respiratory Issues: The particulates in the atmosphere have been linked to heart problems, respiratory issues and even cancer. Current estimates are that polluted air causes 5.5 million premature deaths per year.

Climate Change: The rise of levels of carbon dioxide, alongside other greenhouses gases, has led to global warming which has caused increasingly unpredictable weather systems and the melting of the ice caps.

Thinning of the Ozone Layer: As the levels of hydro chlorofluorocarbons and chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere rise this leads to a depletion of the ozone layer which protects the planet. As it does we are exposed to higher levels of ultraviolet light which can cause skin and eye problems.

Acid Rain: As sulphur and nitrogen oxides are released into the atmosphere they can combine with water droplets and fall as acid rain. The results can be devastating to fish, wildlife, trees and even the crops we rely on for our food production.

What Can Be Done About Air Pollution?

Air pollution needs to be tackled at a global level through legislation and international agreements which aim to reduce pollution levels, such as the Paris Agreement which was agreed in December 2015.

However, there are also steps we as individuals can take to lower our own environmental impact, particularly when it comes to air pollution.

Reduce Your Use of Private Vehicles: Where possible travel to your destination on foot, by bicycle, on public transport or car pool with others in your area. By lowering vehicle emissions you can reduce your carbon footprint.

Conserve Energy In the Home: Reduce your use of electricity by purchasing eco-friendly goods, keeping your thermostat turned down and insulating your property. Switch to sources of renewable energy where possible.

Recycle: Try to buy less from new and recycle household items as well as everything you are throwing out, even food scraps can go on a compost heap.

Reduce Food Miles: By purchasing more local food from farmers’ markets and growing your own fresh produce you can drastically reduce the distance your food travels to reach your plate.

Improve Your Indoor Air Quality: As well as the steps above you can also improve the air quality in your own home by asking smokers to light up elsewhere; avoiding harsh cleaning agents; minimising your use of synthetic air fresheners; opening the windows regularly; and including plants in your interior design.

While it is sometimes easy to dismiss poor air quality as something which doesn’t concern us, we only have to take a look at the statistics to understand the negative impact pollution is having on us and on our world. It is also important to remember that it is vital for us all to act today if we don’t want to leave a legacy it will be impossible for future generations to reverse.

—

by Joe Thomas

 (BIO: Joe is a writer from the UK, who creates articles on a range of subjects, including health and nutrition, sustainability and environmental issues. He believes living a healthy lifestyle will ensure a good platform for a happier life. This will help provide a better environment for us all, and help keep us more free of disease. Raising awareness on such issues is important for progression – education is key. joe@allgreenpr.com)

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Which cities have the worst air pollution levels in the world?

Posted on January 27, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

Air pollution hit the headlines earlier this week after it was reported that levels in London were worse than those in Beijing for a brief period on Monday.

However, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), London is just a mid-table city when it comes to the international league table of polluted places.

screen-shot-2017-01-27-at-11-06-07

London only ranked 1,389th out of the nearly  3,000 cities and towns around the world monitored in the WHO’s database of annual air pollution readings.

WHO guidelines state that cities should aim to have an annual average of no more than 10 micrograms of PM2.5 (very fine particulate matter) for every cubic metre of air. London had an annual PM2.5 average of 15 μg/m3 in 2013, far lower than Beijing’s average of 85.2 μg/m3.

These particles are very small in diameter and are classed as carcinogenic by leading health organisations. Thousands of deaths a year are attributable to air pollution in the UK.

Which cities have the highest air pollution levels worldwide?

According to the WHO, the most polluted city in the world is  Zabol in Iran where PM2.5 measurements were found to average a massive 217 μg/m3 for the latest available year. This is more than 20 times higher than the WHO’s guidelines suggest it should be.

The next two entries on the list are both located in India (Gwalior and Allahabad) while the first non-Asian city on the list is Bamenda in Cameroon which came in eighth place.

Tetovo in Macedonia was the most polluted European city in the database, followed by Tuzla in  Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The most polluted city in the UK isn’t actually London. Glasgow topped that list, followed by Scunthorpe and Leeds with London in sixth place.

However, given that these rankings are based on figures taken in 2013, the situation may have changed since. London may also experience greater peaks in air pollution but these figures are all annual averages.

screen-shot-2017-01-27-at-11-07-10

Asian cities tend to be more polluted

The WHO’s database is by no means a comprehensive list of every city in the world – many places will simply not be able to provide air pollution figures of sufficient quality to be included.

However, from the figures available, Asian cities were the likeliest to exceed the 10 μg/m3 guideline for PM2.5.

Just four of the 632 Asian locations included in the data were found to be below this level, meaning that the equivalent of 99.4 per cent of Asian cities exceeded it.

African cities were the next most likely to annually exceed their recommended levels of air pollution while towns and cities in Oceania were the least likely.

screen-shot-2017-01-27-at-11-07-47

Source: Which cities have the worst air pollution levels in the world?

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Pollution in London from wood burning on the rise 

Posted on January 26, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

If there was one surprise from the recent very high pollution levels, it was the fact that according to King’s College some of the pollution was due to “unusually high levels of domestic wood burning”.

This is not to underestimate the contribution of traffic emissions but wood burning, according to the experts, was making up half of the pollution readings at some monitors at some sites – all exacerbated by low winds not blowing away pollutants.

So isn’t London a clean air zone which is meant to prevent their use? Well, yes.

‘Exempt appliances’

The Clean Air Act means local councils can set up Smoke Control Areas where only smokeless fuels should be burnt, or wood is burnt only in “exempt appliances”.

Homeowners can be fined £1,000, although I haven’t found any records of people being fined in London.

Enforcement may be an issue, as it is not usually a priority for London’s councils.

But wood stoves are becoming more popular and it seems the emissions from wood burning have increased.

The air quality campaigners Clean Air in London say: “Solid fuels are considerably more polluting that natural gas (the main heating fuel used in London).

“In 2009 coal and wood burning in the home was thought to be responsible for 12% of UK PM10 emissions , whilst research by King’s College London suggests around 12% of the PM10 in London’s air during winter 2010 arose from wood burning.”

That is quite a leap from 12% to 50% in the levels of wood burning on Monday.

Also it is worth noting that even the exempt appliances are not completely clean.

In fact, according to a presentation by The Danish Ecological Council which has looked into the use of wooden stoves: “Just 16,000 wood stoves in Copenhagen (600,000 inhabitants) emit as much fine-particles pollution in one winter, as all traffic emit within one year.”

It also says: “New low-emission stoves cause much higher emissions (above 500.000 part/cm3) than new trucks with particulate filters (below 1.000 part/cm3).”

So far mayoral policies have been aimed at cleaning up traffic in particular NO2, but perhaps some attention should focus on the burning of wood in homes.

Simon Birkett from Clean Air In London says: “We need the mayor to educate people and local authorities to enforce the existing Clean Air Act while it’s updated.”

ClientEarth’s air quality lawyer Anna Heslop said: “When pollution is this high then we need to tackle all major sources of it. The biggest cause of chronic and dangerous air pollution all year round comes from diesel vehicles.

“Wood burners can contribute to the most serious smog episodes which we see in winter, like those which Londoners are experiencing at the moment.

“During the worst episodes of very high pollution, people need to be advised not just on the levels but on how they can avoid adding to the pollution, and that means everything from using cleaner transport options and leaving their cars at home to avoiding using wood burners.”

Source: Pollution in London from wood burning on the rise – BBC News

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Agricultural fires in Brazil harm infant health, a warning for the developing world

Posted on January 26, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

Pollution from the controlled fires that burn across Brazil’s São Paulo state during the sugarcane-harvesting season has a negative impact on infant health nearby. But the health of those same infants likely benefits from the economic opportunities the fires bring to their parents.

Researchers at Princeton and Duke universities gathered information from satellites, pollution monitors and birth records to untangle those competing influences and accurately measure the impact of pollution from the fires.

They found that exposure to pollution from the fires in the last few months of gestation leads to earlier birth and smaller babies, and they found some evidence of increased fetal mortality. Conditions in early life, including in utero, have been shown to affect children’s longterm outcomes, not only in terms of health but also their educational and economic success.

The findings suggest that policymakers in Brazil and across the developing world should pay more attention to the negative health impact of pollution from fires that are often part of traditional farming techniques, even though the pollution doesn’t usually reach levels considered dangerous by industrial standards.

“Policymakers often think about heavily polluted cities like Beijing or New Delhi, but our results show that these agricultural fires are consequential,” said Tom Vogl, an assistant professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton.

Vogl and co-author Marcos Rangel, assistant professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, detailed their findings in a working paper titled “Agricultural Fires and Infant Health” released online in December by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Brazil is the world’s leading producer of sugarcane, and São Paulo state accounts for more than two-thirds of the nation’s production. The traditional approach to harvesting begins with burning the fields to remove straw and other materials, leaving the cane to be cut by hand. Although mechanized harvesting, which doesn’t use fires, is becoming more common in Brazil, traditional techniques are still widely used there and across the developing world.

The researchers used remote-sensing data from satellites to track fires, which burn throughout the six-month harvesting season. That data was combined with pollution and weather information collected by 13 air-quality monitoring stations.

“We find that fires that are upwind from population centers increase pollution levels in those areas and other fires don’t increase pollution nearly as much,” Vogl said.

The researchers then linked the fire and pollution information to vital records and hospitalization records from the Brazilian government. Altogether the information allowed the researchers to compare how the health of infants responded to fires that had different effects on pollution in their communities.

The key to the research design, Vogl said, was incorporating information on wind direction, which allowed the researchers to parse out the consequences of pollution from the fires from the beneficial things that are correlated with the fires.

“We would get the answer completely wrong if we just looked at the relationship between fires and infant health in general,” Vogl said. “The reason is that these agricultural fires are necessarily connected with economic activity. When there’s more sugarcane harvesting, there are more fires. And when there is more sugarcane harvesting, people have higher incomes, which can be good for kids and kids’ health.”

Rangel added that sustainable development policies need to take into account trade-offs between economic and environmental goals.

“Our results point to a dirty side of clean fuel policies in Brazil,” Rangel said. “To some extent, the incentives for ethanol production for cleaner fuel in urban areas have considerable side effects on the population and future generations in the production areas.

“By appropriately measuring how much ill comes with the blessings of a strong agricultural cycle, our work highlights the need for evidence-based policies across the globe,” Rangel said.

Prashant Bharadwaj, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California-San Diego who studies development and labor economics, said the research helps fill an important gap by looking at persistent, moderate pollution like that from agricultural fires.

“Controlled burns for the purposes of agriculture are very popular in developing countries where the density of population near agricultural areas is also large; hence, their study has important implications for not only large parts of the world, but also for the significant portion of the world’s population that resides in poorer agricultural settings,” Bharadwaj said. Vogl said the researchers, who began their collaboration when Rangel was a visiting professor at Princeton, are working to apply the same technique to examining agricultural fires in Africa.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-01-agricultural-brazil-infant-health-world.html#jCp

Source: Agricultural fires in Brazil harm infant health, a warning for the developing world

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