Environmental News

New research shows that children exposed to air pollution may experience some of the very same physical and genetic changes in their brains that adults who have Alzheimer's disease experience. It's not a big shock that more scientists have linked air pollution to health problems. Past research shows that air pollution is linked to asthma, autism, bodily inflammation, poor academic success, brain, respiratory, and digestive problems in early life, low IQ, developmental delays, slower lung growth and other serious issues. In the case of this study, researchers compared the brains of children and young adults living in urban, higher pollution areas with the brains of those living in less polluted, rural areas. While studying the brains, researchers found that the gene expression analysis showed there were major differences in how the genes worked between rural and urban dwellers. In fact, more than 100 genes were changed in the brains of individuals who lived in urban areas. Brains from individuals living in urban areas showed signs of amyloid-B plaques and 40% expressed pretangle material. To compare, scientists found no sign of either condition in the brains of individuals living in rural areas. Amyloid-B plaques and pretangle materials are pretty science-minded terms, but to sum up, the plaques are protein deposits commonly found in the brains of people experiencing Alzheimer's. Pretangle material is also often associated with Alzheimer's. Source: Inhabitots, 1/30/12

A research team led by University of Massachusetts Amherst resource economist Sylvia Brandt, with colleagues in California and Switzerland, have revised the cost burden sharply upward for childhood asthma and for the first time include the number of cases attributable to air pollution, in a study released in the online version of the European Respiratory Journal. The total cost of asthma due to pollution is much higher than past traditional risk assessments have indicated and there is growing evidence that exposure to traffic-related air pollution is a cause of asthma and a trigger for attacks, so it should be included, say the authors. They conducted the study in Long Beach and Riverside, Calif., communities with high regional air pollution levels and large roads near residential neighborhoods. Total additional asthma-specific costs there due to traffic-related pollution is about $18 million per year, almost half of which is due to new asthma cases caused by pollution, they report. Source: Environmental Protection, 1/26/12

Leaner, greener flying machines for the year 2025 are on the drawing boards of three industry teams under contract to the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate's Environmentally Responsible Aviation Project. Teams from The Boeing Company in Huntington Beach, Calif., Lockheed Martin in Palmdale, Calif., and Northrop Grumman in El Segundo, Calif., have spent the last year studying how to meet NASA goals to develop technology that would allow future aircraft to burn 50 percent less fuel than aircraft that entered service in 1998 (the baseline for the study), with 75 percent fewer harmful emissions; and to shrink the size of geographic areas affected by objectionable airport noise by 83 percent. Source: Environmental Protection, 1/30/12

High school science teachers from around the Capital Region recently participated in a hands-on training on the principles of green chemistry provided by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation at Siena College in Loudonville, DEC Commissioner Joe Martens announced. Using green chemistry encourages teachers and students to consider the life cycle of the chemicals they work with and promotes awareness of chemical toxicology, focusing on sustainability and how actions in the chemistry lab can impact the environment. This is the second green chemistry workshop offered to science teachers as part of the DEC's Green Chemistry for New York State High Schools pilot program, which is funded by a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. DEC is planning two additional green chemistry workshops, one on Long Island this fall and one in New York City in the fall of 2013. Source: New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC), 1/20/12

The European Parliament has been criticised for waving through revised rules on the disposal of electronic equipment without including any provision to promote the reuse of old equipment. As a result of last week's vote, member states will have to increase their collection of e-waste beyond the current flat-rate target of 4kg per person per year, so that by 2016 they will instead have to collect 45 tonnes for every 100 tonnes of electronic goods put on sale three years previously. By 2019, this target will rise to a collection rate of 65 per cent of sales from three years previous, although countries have the alternative of collecting a comparable figure of 85 per cent of all e-waste generated. In a statement, the parliament said better processing of e-waste would not only reduce the amount of potentially toxic waste sent to landfill or illegally exported overseas, but lead to greater recovery of valuable raw materials. UK-based IT charity Computer Aid slammed the new rules as "extremely disappointing," after MEPs ignored calls for a separate target to encourage the re-use of old electronic equipment that could be refurbished. It said the decision not to include a target for reusing electronic goods ran counter to the EU's own waste hierarchy, which holds prevention of waste and reuse as its top priorities. Source: The Guardian Environment Network, 1/24/12

PEKIN, Ill. -- The Pekin City Council removed an agreement with Advanced Technology Recycling from its agenda Monday, leaving it up to residents to choose where they will drop off electronic waste. Pekin City Manager Joe Wuellner said it should not be up to the city to decide where residents dispose of old computers, TVs and the like. The decision follows some controversy after a Pekin business and a Peoria business both bid for a contract to accept the waste. An Illinois law went into effect Jan. 1 that prohibits the disposal of electronic waste into Illinois landfills because of the hazardous materials the items contain. Source: Pekin Daily Times, 1/25/12

In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers -- as well as dozens of other American industries -- have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history. However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious -- sometimes deadly -- safety problems. Source: The New York Times, 1/25/12

Treehugger reported Jaymi Heimbuch talked with CES Sumir Karayi about some of the misconceptions about the cloud, and what needs to happen for it to be truly a greener option for IT. Source: Treehugger, 1/19/12

Electric car batteries have up to 70% capacity remaining after 10 years of use. This allows them to be used beyond the lifetime of the vehicle for applications, and smart grids can take advantage of their capacity to store intermittent renewable energy. Source: Treehugger, 1/20/12

A new research study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) may reduce the effectiveness of common childhood vaccines. Researchers working on this study, headed up by Dr. Philippe Grandjean, chair of environmental medicine at the University of Southern Denmark, studied children born in the Faroe Islands due to reports of increasing amounts of PFCs in the drinking water and fish located within close proximity to the Islands. Children in the study received the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTaP) vaccine at 3 months, along with the recommended booster at age five. The researchers tested the immunity of the children, at age five and seven years, and drew some blood to test PFC levels. What they found wasn't good. Higher levels of PFCs in the blood correlated with much lower immune responses. In fact, by the age of seven years, children with a twofold increase of bodily PFCs were up to fours times as likely to have an immune response that was no longer even clinically active. Basically, children with the highest PFC levels weren't as protected or weren't protected at all against disease, even though they'd been vaccinated. Source: Inhabitots, 1/26/12

This article discusses the IL e-waste law, particularly the landfill ban which went into effect this month. Illinois has the highest state residential electronics recycling goal in the US and the highest per pound fine for manufacturers who fail to comply with the law. Source: Chicago Talks, 1/25/12

Two-thirds of corporate leaders say management attention to and investment in sustainability rose from 2010 to 2011, according to a global study by MIT Sloan Management Review and The Boston Consulting Group. In the third annual Sustainability & Innovation Global Executive Study, sponsored by SAP and Shell, two-thirds of companies also said sustainability is necessary for competitiveness, up from 55 percent a year before. Source: Environmental Leader, 1/26/12

Last night, U.S. president Barack Obama delivered his Constitutionally mandated State of the Union address. The President called for greater development of natural gas and oil reserves as well as continued investments in renewable energy. Environmental stewardship is also part of the President's priorities. Source: Smart Planet, 1/24/12

Yesterday, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin signed into law S.92 that will require anyone who sells products or provides services for cleaning a school to sell or use only certified green products. The specific certifications will be determined by the Vermont Department of Public Health. Vermont's new bill brings the number of states with school green cleaning requirements up to ten. Currently, the following states have school green cleaning legislation on the books: Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, Nevada, New York, and now, Vermont. Source: Healthy Schools Campaign, 1/25/12