Earth Protect Blog

  By Conrad Swanson The Denver Post Colorado can expect tens of millions from the federal government to plug and restore hundreds of orphaned oil and gas wells out of the bipartisan infrastructure bill that Congress passed last year, government officials said. In all, the infrastructure bil...

Air pollution makes people more vulnerable to respiratory infections; climate change brings people in closer contact with animals that can spread disease. BY NEELA BANERJEE  MAR 12, 2020 Doctors and public health researchers are getting an increasingly accurate and nuanced picture o...

Catching a snowflake on your tongue just isn’t as fun when mercury-tainted precipitation enters the equation. In central areas of North America, mercury levels in rain appear to be rising, according to a recent study from The Science of the Total Environment, despite the fact that me...

Beijing raised its pollution alert from yellow to orange, the second highest, Friday as pollution levels reached 20 times recommended limits. The Air Quality index in Beijing reached 470, with anything over 300 considered severe pollution, while in neighboring Hebei province Dangerous PM2.5 particl...

Findings by University of Montana Professor Dr. Lilian Calderón-Garcidueñas, MA, MD, Ph.D., and her team of researchers reveal that children living in megacities are at increased risk for brain inflammation and neurodegenerative changes, including Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease. Calderón-Garc...

Unregulated trash burning around the globe is pumping far more pollution into the atmosphere than shown by official records. A new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research estimates that more than 40 percent of the world’s garbage is burned in such fires, emitting gases and particle...

The World Health Organization says air pollution in many of the world's cities is breaching its guidelines. Its survey of 1,600 cities in 91 countries revealed that nearly 90% of people in urban centres breathe air that fails to meet levels deemed safe. The WHO says that about half of the world's ...

New research from the University of Rochester Medical Center describes how exposure to air pollution early in life produces harmful changes in the brains of mice, including an enlargement of part of the brain that is seen in humans who have autism and schizophrenia.   As in autism and schizoph...

Poor air quality and health problems will become the summertime norm throughout the US as scientists predict a 70% rise in ground-level ozone − unless action is taken to cut emissions LONDON, 18 May − Stand by for long, hot North American summers of smarting eyes, tickling throats, asthma, bronchit...

BEIJING — The Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau announced Monday that it had imposed fines of more than $1.7 million against companies and business ventures that violated air pollution standards in the first four months of 2014. Zhong Chonglei, an environmental official, told the st...

Images of Rodeo Drive or the Hollywood Sign are getting hazier by the day, and the long-term drought across the Southwest is a culprit. As a dry pattern prevails across all of California, rain refuses to fall and snow cover in the higher elevations has been so thin that residents are worried their ...

New research suggests that high levels of BPA, a chemical in many plastics and canned food linings, might raise the risk of miscarriage in women prone to that problem or having trouble getting pregnant. The work is not nearly enough to prove a link, but it adds to "the biological plausibility" that...

Near the corner of Tillary and Jay Streets in Brooklyn, Michael Heimbinder stood near a blue mailbox, head down, poking at his smartphone. A graph appeared: a single line plotting ambient carbon monoxide exposure in the neighborhood. Minutes later, he ran over to an idling Honda Pilot and...

Long-term exposure to air pollution may be linked to heart attacks and strokes by speeding up atherosclerosis, or "hardening of the arteries", according to a University of Michigan public health researcher and colleagues from across the US. Sara Adar, the John Searle Assistant Professor of Epidemio...

Concerns about air quality are drifting in with the arrival of warm weather. Monday marked the renewal of what the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources considers “ozone season,” observed through daily air quality forecasts in urban areas. Officials say it demands more attention in ...

China's efforts to assess the problem of smog hanging over Beijing and other cities has meant business for Western providers of specialized air-monitoring equipment, and this could pick up with efforts to clear the skies. "It's only recently that equipment able to monitor PM2.5 has been manufacture...

This is a story that shows how deliriously capitalist China has become (for good and bad). Rapid industrialisation has covered northern China in a dense pea soup of toxic chemicals. In the past, the old fashioned communist solution might have been either to ignore the problem or, if people insist on...

The price of oil isn’t the only hydrocarbon going through the roof. Check out thermal coal prices to see how dependent economic growth has become on burning increasing amounts of fossil fuels. Prices of Newcastle coal, the Asian coal price benchmark, are poised to rise by as much as 30 per cent this...