Air Pollution

In recent years, environmental justice researchers have uncovered wide disparities in exposure to toxic pollutants between people living in low-income neighborhoods and those living in wealthier communities. Much of the research has focused on air pollution emitted from factories, along with diesel truck and automobile exhaust from highways—which are generally situated far from high-income neighborhoods. ...

Climate change has brought an increasing number of wildfires and air quality problems. In the US, the West Coast has seen more than its fair share of fires over the past several years. Here on the East Coast, we were affected by wildfires in Canada last year, creating a haze across the skies and warnings ...

An EU-funded initiative is transforming the way cities tackle air pollution by engaging citizens in the collection of high-resolution data on frequently visited spots – neighbourhoods, schools and lesser-known city pockets often missed by official monitoring. The EU boasts a rich and advanced history in pollution monitoring, offering one of the most advanced and detailed ...

NASA has made new data available that can provide air pollution observations at unprecedented resolutions – down to the scale of individual neighborhoods. The near real-time data comes from the agency’s TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution) instrument, which launched last year to improve life on Earth by revolutionizing the way scientists observe air quality ...

EarthSense, today announced a partnership with GISCAD, a Portugal-based geomatics and civil engineering solutions company, to bring its air quality monitoring solutions and services to Portugal, Angola and Mozambique. GISCAD provides a range of advanced technology equipment, software and technical support to its clients in the geomatics, engineering, construction and architecture sectors. Its partnership with ...

Man kann es weder sehen noch riechen oder schmecken: das radioaktive Gas Radon. In geringen Mengen ist es in jedem Gebäude vorhanden. Erhöhte Radon-Werte stellen ein ernst zu nehmendes Gesundheitsrisiko dar, denn dieser Innenraumschadstoff gehört – nach dem Rauchen – zu den häufigsten Ursachen von Lungenkrebs. Eine neue Karte des Bundesamtes für Strahlenschutz zeigt die ...

¿A qué huele Málaga? A esta pregunta tratará de responder la Fundación Aula del Mar Mediterráneo (FAMM), que realizará el primer mapa de olores de la ciudad gracias a la colaboración ciudadana y técnicas de ‘big data’, es decir, de macrodatos. La iniciativa se enmarca en el proyecto LifeWatch Eric y en ella pueden participar ...

After a summer that broke all sorts of dismal records in terms of cataclysmic wildfires across North America, there is now an even greater awareness of poor air quality—its myriad health impacts and the overwhelming need for sustainable solutions. To that end, Yu Yang, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering in Lehigh University’s ...

While laboratory-based emissions testing can help keep polluting vehicles off the road, they alone are not enough. What is needed is new technologies, such as remote emission sensing (RES). RES uses sensors and cameras to automatically measure exhaust emissions from vehicles in real-world operation. While RES may be a proven technology, it is not widely ...

Google is expanding its sustainability offerings with new products from its Google Maps platform, including mapping technologies for solar energy, air quality, and pollen distribution. The mapping tools use AI and machine learning paired with aerial imagery and environmental data to provide valuable information for developers, businesses, and organizations to track and mitigate their environmental ...

The Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument collected its “first light” measurements of nitrogen dioxide air pollution over North America on August 2, 2023. Beginning at 11:15 AM Eastern Daylight Time (8:15 AM Pacific Time), the instrument scanned the continent every hour for six consecutive hours. TEMPO measures sunlight reflected and scattered off the ...

Geospatial artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning models are set to transform the monitoring of air quality in major Indian cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Kolkata. This groundbreaking development was announced by a senior scientist during the India Clean Air Summit (ICAS) 2023. “We must link up SDGs and air pollution indicators, as ...

Donato Kofel has quantified the positive and negative effects of trees on outdoor air quality in Geneva Canton. His method can be used by city planners to design their large-scale planting programs more effectively. For his Master’s project at the end of his degree program, Kofel developed a new way to use the GIS application ...

This summer, as wildfire smoke blankets large swaths of North America and heat-stoked summer haze reaches its seasonal peak, NASA and its partners are deploying several new tools to observe air quality and pollution from the street to the stratosphere. Launched into orbit earlier this spring, TEMPO, short for Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution, is ...

The interactive online tool, a first on such a scale for all of Europe, allows users to visualise how the environment around them affects their health and well-being via set of detailed maps. It covers topics like air quality, noise and quietness, green and blue spaces and climate change throughout the member and collaborating countries ...

Un equipo de científicos del grupo de Servicios del Sistema Terrestre del Departamento de Ciencias de la Tierra del Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación ha llevado a cabo un estudio que demuestra que la inteligencia artificial puede ser de gran utilidad para obtener información fiable sobre la probabilidad de exceder los límites ...

NO2 emissions are known to be primarily generated by industrial facilities or vehicle exhausts. Recently, a research team from POSTECH analyzed satellite remote sensing data from ESA and released results showing that food processing facilities and high-rise apartments that are 10 stories or higher are significant sources of NO2 emissions. The team estimated average NO2 ...

While the push to mandate EVs aims to reduce tailpipe emissions such as carbon dioxide — the federal government has set a target of complete EV adoption by 2035 — swapping every vehicle on the road still won’t eliminate all the sources of air pollution that can impact human health. That’s because brake pads, rotors ...

Dublin City Council has launched the results of Google’s Project Air View initiative, which measured the air quality of Dublin City’s streets over a period of 16 months and gathered over 50 million pieces of data. The project was delivered in partnership with the City Council’s Smart Dublin programme, with data captured by Google’s first ...

Above the islands of Hawaii on January 28, a green laser was seen piercing the night sky, silently tracing a path towards the horizon like a stutter in the Matrix’s code. The scene was caught on camera from a telescope atop Hawaii’s tallest peak. Originally, experts at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), which ...

Não é novidade que impactos negativos no meio ambiente são capazes de gerar inúmeras consequências para o mundo e para a sociedade. No entanto, para além das mudanças climáticas, e os riscos econômicos ocasionados pela poluição, pesquisadores da Escola de Políticas Públicas e Governo da Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV EPPG), em Brasília, investigam o impacto ...

The United Nations has identified improving the walkability and bikeability of cities as a key goal in efforts to reduce dependence on greenhouse gas–emitting automobiles and promote routine exercise for public health. However, increased walking and cycling can come with their own health risks. Time spent in the open air, in addition to other factors, ...

The Real Urban Emissions (TRUE) Initiative, in partnership with Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), carried out a remote sensing testing study in the Greater Jakarta Region to provide up-to-date information on vehicle emissions. Analysis of the data collected is intended to provide evidence and support for future actions to address the impacts of motor vehicles ...

A single steel factory in Jiangsu, China, emits 43 million tons of CO2 every year—more than the entire country of Madagascar or Nicaragua. It’s one of more than 70,000 individual sources of climate pollution listed on a new map made from what is now the largest, most detailed database of greenhouse gas emissions in the ...