The advent of battery storage heralds an even deeper embrace of electric cars and renewable energy. But amid the green tech revolution, we should be wary of creating new pollution problems.
Nobel Laureates met recently in Hong Kong to sign a memorandum calling for cities to help guard against climate change. As the most creative places on the planet, big cities are the perfect place to meet this challenge.
Under the Dome, a hugely popular online documentary about China’s smog crisis, could be as influential as 1962’s US pesticide exposé Silent Spring - but only if Chinese officials allow debate to flourish.
Environmental health research has confirmed that chronic, low-level exposure to toxins in our environment – including our food, air and water – can have a significant impact on our health. We need to expand…
I’m quite nervous about writing this. I’m going to stray from my familiar academic world into a political one, and it’s on an issue that may very well have killed several people. My reputation has already…
Most of us have littered at one time or another, and in the process we probably contributed to the enormous of amounts of plastic that enter the ocean every year, eventually ending up in one of the five…
Lead pollution from Australia reached Antarctica in 1889 – long before the frozen continent’s golden age of exploration – and has remained there ever since, new research shows. In our study, published…
While city planners have been encouraged to plant trees and gardens to green the city for the health of its inhabitants, recent research has found that the same trees can damage certain buildings. Our…
The ineffective burning of wood in traditional stoves means that more people die around the world from pollution indoors than outdoors. There are simple, cleaner alternatives for sale, but encouraging…
City-dwellers consider cycling or walking to work to be part of a healthy routine. But latest studies on air pollution show that nanoparticles – unseen pollutants – are a major concern. In the UK, the…
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report tells us that CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to rise and that, unchecked, climate change will likely…
Australians living in poorer communities, with lower employment and education levels, as well as communities with a high proportion of Indigenous people, are significantly more likely to be exposed to…
I was in the middle of giving a talk on the marine debris problem at a notable Californian marine research institute, when I drank the last of my water bottle, threw it onto the hall floor from the podium…
Frustratingly, the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has turned up many floating objects, but none of them are from the plane. That’s largely because the latest search area is likely to…
It might seem strange to some that dust from the Sahara is falling on their cars in England. Stranger still, that Saharan sand is mixing with general air pollution from both continental Europe and the…
Glen Peters, Center for International Climate and Environment Research - Oslo
Is it fair that China is blamed for the carbon dioxide emissions it generates to manufacture products destined for the West? Would the West do more to reduce greenhouse gases if it had to pay for the emissions…
The current “airpocolypse” emergency in Shanghai - which has seen schoolchildren ordered indoors to protect them from the polluted air, flights grounded and companies ordered to cut production - comes…
So serious are the effects of air pollution on human health - the WHO recently categorised it as carcinogenic, responsible for 223,000 deaths a year worldwide - that it is easy to neglect its wider impact…