Latest Soot Stories

NASA -- Soot is normally something you think of at the bottom of your chimney, but it also gets into the air, and scientists have been finding it at the frozen Arctic. Soot gets into the air when fuel, vegetation and firewood are burned. When you watch the smoke and soot drift away from your chimney, you normally wouldn't think that it would drift to the North Pole and change the ice and snow there. NASA has been exploring how black carbon or soot affects the Earth's climate, by using...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The major source of potentially climate-changing soot in the air over south Asia is home cooking fires, according to a team of Indian and American researchers. The burning of wood, agricultural waste and animal manure for cooking is the largest source of black carbon in the air in that region, according to the team led by C. Venkataraman of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. "We therefore suggest that the control of these emissions through cleaner cooking...