#air pollution

[reasonsforhope]

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a rule Tuesday [April 9, 2024] that will require 218 chemical plants to reduce toxic and carcinogenic airborne pollutants, aiming to reduce the number of people with elevated cancer risk by 96% nationwide.

The rulings principally address chloroprene: used to make rubber products, and ethylene oxide, used primarily for sterilizing medical supplies. Long-term exposure to these chemicals and their manufacturing have been identified as possible carcinogens, or cancer-causing agents.

According to a report in the Washington Post, this can include lymphoma, leukemia, breast cancer, and liver cancer.

Across a strip of Louisiana and Texas where half of the 218 chemical manufacturing facilities set to be affected by the new regulations are located, cancer rates of these kinds are substantially higher than national averages, leading it to be colloquially called “Cancer Alley.”

EPA Administrator Michael Regan visited Cancer Alley during the open-comment period of the proposed ruling, and said that across the 85 miles dotted with communities, he failed to meet a single person who didn’t know a loved one or friend who had either developed cancer, died of it, or knew someone who had.

Once implemented, the ruling will reduce more than 6,200 tons of toxic air pollution each year, according to the Post."

-via Good News Network, April 15, 2024

#I was going to say “wait isn't it normal for everyone to know someone who got cancer” #then I remembered that I grew up three miles from the site of a gigantic nuclear meltdown #which hardly anyone knows about it because they fucking covered it up btw #so it's possible I'm wrong and that is not a normal thing #united states #epa #environmental protection agency #louisiana #texas #cancer #cw cancer #public health #pollution #air pollution #environmental racism #environmental justice #oncology #good news #hope #cancer alley

[animentality]

#canada fires #air quality #nyc #air pollution #climate change #twitter #9/11

[thoughtportal]

streets with rain gardens and streets without

#tiktok #rain gardens #rain garden #garden #gardening #water pollution #green infrastructure #air pollution #pollenators #solarpunk #solar punk

[mapsontheweb]

Air pollution in Europe, 2000-2019 average.

#maps #europe #air pollution

[zinjanthropusboisei]

If you are on the East Coast and trying to figure out what all of these air quality warnings mean and what you should do, here is what the colors and corresponding AQI numbers mean. The updated AirNow map is at this link:

Edit: this was posted at 10:50am on June 6 2023 and the screenshots were taken around 9am.

#wildfire #wildfires #nova scotia #nova scotia fires #air pollution #quebec wildfires #canada wildfires

[probablyasocialecologist]

Analysis of data gathered using cutting-edge methodology – including detailed satellite images and measurements from more than 1,400 ground monitoring stations – reveals a dire picture of dirty air, with 98% of people living in areas with highly damaging fine particulate pollution that exceed World Health Organization guidelines. Almost two-thirds live in areas where air quality is more than double the WHO’s guidelines.

[...]

“This is a severe public health crisis,” said Roel Vermeulen, a professor of environmental epidemiology at Utrecht University who led the team of researchers across the continent that compiled the data. “What we see quite clearly is that nearly everyone in Europe is breathing unhealthy air.”

#pollution #air pollution #christ this is dire

[bodyunderconstruction]

Smoke from Canada

Please stay inside if you are sensitive to smoke

check your area for air quality:

PLEASE REBLOG AND SHARE MORE TIPS

I’m actively updating as of Wednesday Jun 7, 2023. Please check your local news stations and weather apps for information on your area.

Outside

If you have to go outside please wear a mask, have lots of sunscreen and drink water when available/needed. Stay in shade when walking. Wear light colors outside, avoid dark colors. Cloth Masks are cool but paint/filter masks are your best friend. If you have a inhaler just bring it with you everywhere! Inside

When inside don’t open windows and keep curtain closed to expel heat. Sandwiches and fruit are your friend. Cooking is far too hot. If you are about to run out of water fill tub with cold water and pray you have a good drain. Basements are your friend. DRINK WATER NOT SODA OR SPORTS DRINKS! Don’t use drier, use a clothes line if possible

Extra

if you are looking for shelter, Public libraries, coffee shops, grocery stores, anywhere thats air conditioned. Take anything you need but be SAFE

Did I mention water? Gatorade is fun but don’t drink caffeine.

If there’s no smoke in your area and you just need to cool down, open your window at night/early morning

|| Take it easy. No, easier than that. Aside from the mental toll the smoke and horrible weird light and the creepy red sun and the burning smell take on you, your body is just working way harder to do everything it normally does. You will be exhausted, you will be distracted, you will have headaches and you will struggle with basic tasks like "walking up stairs." Do not try to power through it. Cancel plans, reschedule appointments, do fewer errands or consolidate them into one trip.

Treat yourself like you have a cold. Plenty of fluids, stopping when you're tired, cough drops and eye drops for the painful throat and eyes, inhalers if you have one.

Spend as little time outside as you possibly can. This includes your pets. Do not open your windows, do not open your screen door, do not run your AC (this is where some of the above advice for hot weather will come in handy.)

If you have to go outside, wear an N95 or KN95 mask. Make sure it's well-fitted around your face. You're not trying to keep out the smoke, but the PM2.5 (particulate matter 2.5 microns or smaller.) That's the stuff that causes cancer. If you have a fan with a HEPA filter, blast it all the time. If you don't have one go look at diy air filter link below, ask a mutual aid center if you cannot come into contact with these materials. || These tips are from them, a few links below are from them too so go give them some love. https://www.tumblr.com/salteywater

LINKS:

Diy Air Filter

Smoke Tips & Safety

Google Docs, being updated currently

Diy Sun Reflector

More tips

#Heat tips #Fire tips #canada fires #Canada fire #canada wildfires #Canada wildfire #climate crisis #natural disasters #Forest Fires #mutual aid #lgtbq community #crust punk #anarchism #air pollution #air pollutants #Nova Scotia fires #alberta wildfires #Heavy Smoke #Fire Crews #bush fire #enviromental #environmental activism #climate activst #climate activism #Canada #Canada is burning #reblog to save a life #reblog this plz #reblog #solar punk

[socialjusticeinamerica]

#corporate greed #big oil #pollution #air pollution #climate and environment #climate change #global warming #republican assholes #oligarch assholes #fuck big oil #fuck coal #fuck Joe Manchin

[gotham-ruaidh]

Actual photo of NYC right now

#nyc #smoke #wildfires #new york city #godzilla #air pollution

[allthecanadianpolitics]

An air-monitoring experiment found cancer-causing chemicals are polluting the entire city of Hamilton, Ont.

In the study, a concentration of benzo (a)pyrene — a carcinogenic chemical – in Hamilton exceeded the Ontario air quality guidelines.

“It’s about one cigarette per day that people are breathing in,” Matthew Adams, a University of Toronto associate professor and air-quality expert co-ordinating the study, said.

The research, led by the City of Hamilton and funded by Health Canada, has been underway for nearly two years. In that time, more than 60 air monitors have been attached to street poles in every ward to track air quality. A public town hall took place on Tuesday night to discuss the results.

Of note, benzo (a)pyrene, a chemical created when certain substances are not burned completely, was found across the city – not solely in areas near steel mills that commonly emit the cancer-linked chemicals. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

#cdnpoli #Ontario #Hamilton #air pollution #capitalism

[solarpunks]

A Liquid Tree? Scientists in Serbia Make Incredible Innovation

Dr. Ivan Spasojevic, Ph.D. in Biophysical sciences, and one of the authors on the project from the Institute for Multidisciplinary Research at the University of Belgrade, developed an innovative tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving air quality: the liquid tree. Also dubbed LIQUID 3, the novel creation is Serbia’s first urban photo-bioreactor, a solution in the fight for clean air. It contains six hundred litres of water and works by using microalgae to bind carbon dioxide and produce pure oxygen through photosynthesis.

The microalgae replace two 10-year-old trees or 200 square meters of lawn. . The advantage of microalgae is that it is 10 to 50 times more efficient than trees. 

Very interesting, especially in urban contexts that can’t support / be reconfigured to support more trees.

I imagine a Solarpunk world where each one of these is sculptural - a work of public art.

#microalgae #art #public art #air pollution #Photosynthesis #street tree #sci-fi #irl solarpunk

[reasonsforhope]

hey, how do you cope with people saying we only have a small amount of time left to stop the worst effects of climate change? no matter how hopeful and ok i am, that always sends me back into a spiral :(

A few different ways

1. The biggest one is that I do math. Because renewable energy is growing exponentially

Up until basically 2021 to now, all of the climate change models were based on the idea that our ability to handle climate change will grow linearly. But that's wrong: it's growing exponentially, most of all in the green energy sector. And we're finally starting to see proof of this - and that it's going to keep going.

And many types of climate change mitigation serve as multipliers for other types. Like building a big combo in a video game.

Change has been rapidly accelerating and I genuinely believe that it's going to happen much faster than anyone is currently predicting

2. A lot of the most exciting and groundbreaking things happening around climate change are happening in developing nations, so they're not on most people's radars.

But they will expand, as developing nations are widely undergoing a massive boom in infrastructure, development, and quality of life - and as they collaborate and communicate with each other in doing so

3. Every country, state, city, province, town, nonprofit, community, and movement is basically its own test case

We're going to figure out the best ways to handle things in a remarkably quick amount of time, because everyone is trying out solutions at once. Instead of doing 100 different studies on solutions in order, we get try out 100 (more like 10,000) different versions of different solutions simultaneously, and then figure out which ones worked best and why. The spread of solutions becomes infinitely faster, especially as more and more of the world gets access to the internet and other key infrastructure

4. There's a very real chance that many of the impacts of climate change will be reversible

Yeah, you read that right.

Will it take a while? Yes. But we're mostly talking a few decades to a few centuries, which is NOTHING in geological history terms.

We have more proof than ever of just how resilient nature is. Major rivers are being restored from dried up or dead to thriving ecosystems in under a decade. Life bounces back so fast when we let it.

I know there's a lot of skepticism about carbon capture and carbon removal. That's reasonable, some of those projects are definitely bs (mostly the ones run by gas companies, involving carbon credits, and/or trying to pump CO2 thousands of feet underground)

But there's very real potential for carbon removal through restoring ecosystems and regenerative agriculture

The research into carbon removal has also just exploded in the past three years, so there are almost certainly more and better technologies to come

There's also some promising developments in industrial carbon removal, especially this process of harvesting atmospheric CO2 and other air pollution to make baking soda and other industrially useful chemicals

As we take carbon out of the air in larger amounts, less heat will be trapped in the atmosphere

If less heat is trapped in the atmosphere, then the planet will start to cool down

If the planet starts to cool down, a lot of things will stabilize again. And they'll probably start to stabilize pretty quickly

#Anonymous #ask #me #carbon removal #carbon sequestration #carbon emissions #air pollution #forests #afforestation #wetlands #regenerative farming #regenerative agriculture #agriculture #renewable energy #renewable electricity #solar power #wind power #climate change #climate anxiety #climate resilience #good news #hope #hope posting

[thoughtportal]

#tweet #tweets #twitter #COVID-19 #pandemic #the pandemic #air pollution #clean air #wildfires #air quality

[mapsontheweb]

Air pollution in Europe, 2000-2019 average.

#maps #air pollution #europe

[nemfrog]

Union Oil fire in San Pedro (Los Angeles). 1951. Los Angeles Examiner photo collection.

University of Southern California Collections

#fire #smoke #petroleum industry #air pollution #los angeles #1951 #1950s

[probablyasocialecologist]

#science #ecology #air pollution