pollution – Page 12 – Desdemona Despair

Fires burn and smoke pours into the night sky at the scene of an explosion at an illegal crude oil bunkering site at Abaezi forest, in Ohaji-Egbema Local Government Area of Imo state, Nigeria, 23 April 2022. More than 100 people lost their lives. Photo: REUTERS

April 24, 2022

“National disaster”: Blast at illegal Nigerian oil refinery kills more than 100 people – Nigerian President vows to clamp down on illegal refineries after “catastrophe”

YENAGAO, Nigeria, April 24 (Reuters) – Charred bodies were left scattered among burnt palms, cars and vans on Sunday after a weekend explosion which killed more than 100 people at an illegal oil refining depot on the border of Nigeria’s Rivers and Imo states. Flip flops, bags, and clothing belonging to those who died littered […]

Firefighters try to extinguish a fire that broke out at the Ghazipur landfill in New Delhi on 28 March 2022. Photo: Ravi Choudhary / PTI

April 21, 2022

Third fire in Delhi Ghazipur landfill in as many weeks – Environment minister summons municipal waste officials

NEW DELHI, 21 April 2022 (The Wire) – A fire broke out at the Ghazipur landfill in east Delhi on Wednesday, Delhi Fire Service officials said. A call about the fire was received around 4:07 pm and eight fire tenders were rushed to the spot, said Atul Garg, Director, Delhi Fire Service. The fire-fighting operations […]

Sri Lanka rice farmer Niluka Dilrukshi with his wife, Milinda, and their two children. They saw their rice crop deplete by 60 percent in the last harvest due to the government chemical pesticide ban. Photo: Hannah Ellis-Petersen / The Guardian

April 21, 2022

Sri Lanka reels from rash fertiliser ban – “If things go on like this, in the future it will be hard to find a farmer left in Sri Lanka”

By Hannah Ellis-Petersen 20 April 2022 RAJANGANAYA, Sri Lanka (The Guardian) – Driving through the verdant landscape of Rajanganaya, a rural district in north Sri Lanka where the hibiscus flowers pop out of rich green foliage and the mango trees are already weighed down by early fruit, it is hard to imagine this is a […]

Monthly mean atmospheric methane abundance, 1983-2021. The globally-averaged, monthly mean atmospheric methane abundance is determined from marine surface sites. Values for 2021 are preliminary. Graphic: NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory

April 14, 2022

Increase in atmospheric methane set another record during 2021 – Carbon dioxide levels also record a big jump – “The evidence is consistent, alarming, and undeniable”

7 April 2022 (NOAA) – For the second year in a row, NOAA scientists observed a record annual increase in atmospheric levels of methane, a powerful, heat-trapping greenhouse gas that’s the second biggest contributor to human-caused global warming after carbon dioxide. NOAA’s preliminary analysis showed the annual increase in atmospheric methane during 2021 was 17 […]

Smoke billows from a fire at Ghazipur landfill, in New Delhi, India, late Saturday, 9 April 2022. Photo: Kamal Kishore / PTI

April 10, 2022

Fire at Delhi’s Ghazipur landfill site again, weeks after major blaze was doused — “Waste, plastic, cloth … once it catches fire, it keeps burning”

10 April 2022 (The Quint) – A fire broke out at the Ghazipur landfill in East Delhi on Saturday night, 9 April, officials stated, about two weeks after a major fire broke out at the same site that required almost 50 hours of firefighting operations to douse. This fire, however, was put out within three hours and there was no casualty, as per […]

A haze caused by dust covers the capital Nicosia, in the southeast Mediterranean island of Cyprus, on Monday, 4 April 2022. The World Health Organization (WHO), the U.N. health agency, says nearly everybody in the world breathes air that doesn't meet its standards for air quality. WHO is calling for more action reduce fossil-use use that generate pollutants that cause respiratory and blood-flow problems and lead to millions of preventable deaths each year. Photo: Petros Karadjias / AP Photo

April 10, 2022

Millions dying across the world due to poor-quality air that 99 percent of world’s population breathes – “After surviving a pandemic, it is unacceptable to still have 7 million preventable deaths and countless preventable lost years of good health due to air pollution”

By Jamey Keaten 4 April 2022 GENEVA (AP) – The U.N. health agency says nearly everybody in the world breathes air that doesn’t meet its standards for air quality, calling for more action to reduce fossil-fuel use, which generates pollutants that cause respiratory and blood-flow problems and lead to millions of preventable deaths each year. The […]

Global net anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions projected to 2050. Projected global GHG emissions from Nationally Determined Contribution (NDCs) announced prior to COP26 would make it likely that warming will exceed 1.5°C and also make it harder after 2030 to limit warming to below 2°C. Graphic: IPCC

April 5, 2022

Amid backsliding on climate, the renewables effort now must be tripled – “A litany of broken climate promises”

By António Guterres 4 April 2022 (The Washington Post) – A report released Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a litany of broken climate promises. Together with the IPCC’s previous two reports on physical science and adaptation in the past year, it reveals the yawning gap between climate pledges and reality. And the reality is that we are […]

An octopus is pictured “stilt-walking” with a variety of collected trash. A new study crowdsourced hundreds of images, including this one, that observed octopuses using human garbage for a variety of tasks. Photo: Serge Abourjeily

April 3, 2022

Octopuses are using human garbage as shelter, camouflage and more, study finds – “It’s becoming so common that they’re using these items to protect themselves with instead of their natural shelters, such as seashells, which are becoming scarce in the ocean”

9 March 2022 (CBC Radio) – A new study suggests it’s becoming increasingly common for octopuses to use bottles, cans and other human trash to shelter themselves, camouflage their dens and even house their young. “We believe this is because of the high abundance of these artificial items — you know, the litter item — […]

Concentrations of plastic particles by polymer type in whole blood samples of 22 donors (duplicates a and b, except for No. 6, 9, 15 and 18). All values are greater than the limit of quantification (LOQ). Graphic: Leslie, et al., 2022 / Environment International

March 27, 2022

Microplastics found in human blood for first time – “Our study is the first indication that we have polymer particles in our blood”

By Damian Carrington 24 March 2022 (The Guardian) – Microplastic pollution has been detected in human blood for the first time, with scientists finding the tiny particles in almost 80% of the people tested. The discovery shows the particles can travel around the body and may lodge in organs. The impact on health is as […]

Aerial view of a coal waste operation in Russelton, Pennsylvania that uses waste coal to power bitcoin mining. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that although waste coal is burned using a different process, it still releases carbon dioxide that contributes to warming the atmosphere. The coal waste in Pennsylvania also releases more acid gas and sulfur dioxide than other types of coal. Photo: SCMP

March 27, 2022

Video: U.S. company plans to burn coal waste for bitcoin mining

By Evanne Yu 25 March 2022 (SCMP) – A company in Pennsylvania has an unusual plan to deal with coal waste – crypto mining. Stronghold Digital Mining uses waste left behind by decades-old coal power plants to generate the electricity for hundreds of supercomputers working to mine bitcoin. The US Environmental Protection Agency says that […]