Latest Environmental chemistry Stories

Newfound chemistry should be added to atmospheric models, researchers sayBurning of fossil fuels pumps chemicals into the air that react on surfaces such as buildings and roads to create photochemical smog-forming chlorine atoms, UC Irvine scientists report in a new study.Under extreme circumstances, this previously unknown chemistry could account for up to 40 parts per billion of ozone "“ nearly half of California's legal limit on outdoor air pollution. This reaction is not included in...

The U.S. space agency's Aura spacecraft began its sixth year of research this week, studying Earth's ozone layer, air quality and climate. The satellite, launched July 15, 2004, from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, has transmitted data that is helping scientists address global climate change issues such as global warming; the distribution and chemistry of polluted air, and ozone depletion in the Earth's stratosphere, space agency scientists said. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in...

Scientists search for an understanding of the air-water interface and its effect on air qualityTraveling to Los Angeles can be a hazardous undertaking. The buzzing coastal city at the very edge of the American frontier has long been a symbol of exploration and progress. As planes land in L.A., they must first penetrate the dark, ominous cloud that hangs constantly above the skyscrapers. Smog lies over L.A. like a thick blanket, dimming the sunshine of the Golden State.To some degree,...

Coastal marine ecosystems are at risk worldwide as a result of human activities, according to scientists at UC Santa Barbara who have recently published a study in the Journal of Conservation Letters. The authors have performed the first integrated analysis of all coastal areas of the world."Resource management and conservation in coastal waters must address a litany of impacts from human activities, from the land, such as urban runoff and other types of pollution, and from the...

HARRISBURG, Pa., June 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Department of Environmental Protection and its regional air quality partnerships announced today that an air quality action day is forecast for Friday in the Philadelphia region. The Air Quality Partnership of the Delaware Valley has issued a code ORANGE forecast for unhealthy ozone in Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties. Under current conditions unhealthy ozone levels may persist into the weekend. The...

U.S. researchers have developed a fluorescent substance that can detect harmful ozone molecules in the air as well as in the body. University of Pittsburgh scientists said their fluorescent substance glows bright green when exposed to even minute amounts of ozone, which is a harmful pollutant and lung irritant. But the researchers said ozone is also a possible natural weapon that certain research suggests the human body employs against infections. The scientists said their simple and...

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have developed a fluorescent substance that glows bright green when exposed to even minute amounts of ozone in the air and in biological samples such as human lung cells. A molecule consisting of three oxygen atoms, ozone is at once a harmful pollutant and lung irritant, and a possible natural weapon that certain research suggests the human body employs against infections.The Pitt team reports in the current edition of "Nature Chemistry" that their...

MATTHEWS, N.C., June 22 /PRNewswire/ -- CEM Corporation has won a 2009 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award in the Greener Reaction Conditions category for its Sprint(TM) Rapid Protein Analyzer. The company will accept the award this evening during a ceremony at the Carnegie Institute for Science (CIS) in Washington, DC. (Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090622/CL35336 ) (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090622/CL35336LOGO ) The award, presented by the...

HAMPTON, Va., May 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Rising surface ozone concentrations are damaging nearly $2 billion in annual U.S. soybean crops, a NASA study of satellite measurements indicates. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The study, headed by NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., was presented at the American Geophysical Union Joint Assembly meeting, May 24 in Toronto and looked at five years of soybean yields, surface ozone and satellite...

The Faculty of Biosciences at the University of Helsinki includes a project focusing on the ten major rivers in the world. Academy Research Fellow Anssi Vähätalo's group addresses the journey of riverine organic to the oceans and in particular the photochemical decomposition of organic carbon caused by sunlight.The research project sheds new light on the mechanisms of the carbon cycle on the global scale and it enhances understanding of the links between continents and oceans. Partners...